What If Sears Pointless

What if 24 Hours of LeMons held a one day race at Sears Point on Monday and called it Sears (Even More) Pointless? What if evertyhing that broke on Saturday and Sunday didn't break on Monday? What if all 5 drivers had their fastest times on Monday? What if The Magic Rabbit only had one black flag?  What if the Otter Pop VW Rabbit (that was in class B and shouldn't have been) broke on Monday? What if with one hour left in the race the Magic Rabbit was in second place behind the Communist's R Us BMW and Rye had them in his sights?

 

The answer is, WE WON!!!!!!!!!!!  We won Class B and 8th overall in starting field of 72 cars! Yahoo!!

 

The Dirty Duck Racing Team, the entire team all the way down to Dixie the dog, made it happen. Thank you to everyone! Thanks to the Young Gun pit crew of Nash, Ryezee and Austin to diving in both Saturday and Sunday taking out and replacing three times the front axles and hubs, we couldn't have done it without you. Thanks to each of our support team, Nancy L., Nancy F., Kristin and Kelly! Also the support and advice from John Waite, I think he is now hooked on LeMons, poor soul!

 

Now for some data from Monday's winning race. But first, Saturday and Sunday, we were running fine, but each day we had a failure that cost us 2 hours each day to fix. Failed left front wheel hub and damaged axle on Saturday, probably caused by a failing wheel bearing. Tedders finds new wheel hubs at Viking Auto VW Specialist in Novato, send Ryezee and Austin off in Rye's 911 to pick up the parts. Hey Rye, we now know that the 911 will hit over 100 mph on Highway 37 between Sears Point and Novato! On Sunday the same left front wheel fails again, this time the inner CV joint of the drive axle. Again, fingers do the walking and find an axle at NAPA Auto Parts in Petaluma. This time Tedders heads out, no report on top speeds attained. Oh yes, while these front wheel issues were being fixed, we realized the right rear wheel hub was bent when the Magic Rabbit was hit in Turn 7 by a brain dead dive bomber (who did come by our pit to apologize), so we replaced that hub on Sunday too.

 

OK, back to Monday and the WIN!

 

First off, Hot Shoe award, with only 72 instead of 175 cars on the track, there was a much better opportunity to put down quick laps and WE DID! And the quickest and the resulting Hot Show Award goes to Tedders with a lap time of 2:14.5. This time was over 3 seconds faster than our quickest during the crowded Sat and Sun race. Second quickest was yours truly, Mr. Unruly, with a time of 2:16.1 and nipping at my heels was both Rye at 2:16.5 and Peter at 2:16.8. Paul's top time was 2:18.1.

 

Now there is some real significance to these times, they are closely bunched and that is why we won Class B and also finished 8th overall. Most teams do not have 5 drivers that are so closely matched, that is our advantage, relative speeds are very close so we don't give up much when we change drivers!

 

Some historical info at Sears Point for DDR, 2011 and 2012 had a shorter distance, of interest is the improvements between Pointless and Even More Pointless this year.

 

	Skankaway	Pointless	Pointless	Even More
	2011	2012	2013	2013
Tedders	02:10.5	02:15.9	N/A	02:14.5
Ted	02:13.5	02:56.0	02:17.9	02:16.1
Rye	02:17.5	02:16.8	02:19.3	02:16.5
Peter	N/A	02:26.6	02:17.4	02:16.8
Paul	02:16.4	03:05.0	02:19.7	02:18.1
	Short	Short
	Turn 11	Turn 11
		Wet Track

 

Some more data, the top 13 times were run by Tedders! Great driving, he has a firm grip on what it means to drive a "momentum" race car (that means keep your speed up in and out of corners because we don't have the brute horsepower like the bigger cars). And I also must give an atta boy to Rye (as much a Mr. Unruly hates to) for going out as the last driver on Monday and told to be smooth and stay within yourself (but first past that Dirty Commie car) which he did and we won. I do want to also say that the team from the Communists R Us came over to us after the race to congratulate us, very nice team. Oh yes, they are Russian.

 

	Top 10 Laps	Top 20	Top 50	Top 100
Tedders	10	18	25	30
Ted	-	1	9	28
Rye	-	1	10	21
Peter	-	-	6	15
Paul	-	-	-	6
	10	20	50	100
Fastest Time	02:14.5	02:15.9	02:16.7	02:17.9
Slowest Time	02:15.9	02:16.7	02:17.9	02:19.7
Difference	00:01.3	00:00.9	00:01.1	00:01.9

 

And look at the fastest vs slowest time in each bracket each must about 1 second variation, great driving everyone.

 

We finished 182 laps or 460 miles, that was on top of 203 laps or 514 miles, for a total of 974 miles of blistering, brutal, door banging, wheel squeeching, barrels of fun!

 

Again for Monday, here is how the time on track and laps broke down:

 

	Time
	on track	Laps	Miles
Tedders	1:15	33	83.5
Paul	1:52	46	116.4
Ted	1:49	47	118.9
Peter	1:04	26	65.8
Rye	1:09	30	75.9
	7:09	182	460.5

 

And lastly, pit stops, I will just say that the exchange between Peter and Rye was by far the fastest, all the other exchanges involved at lest one senior member of the team and tended to take just a little longer. Plus those senior stops also involved two cans of gas, not one.

 

Which leads to one last bit of info...we almost ran out of gas at the end!! We decided to put only one can of gas in since Rye's stint was only one hour. Well, we finished and had just enought gas to get off the track, get on the trailer and off the trailer at home, but then NO GAS! So we had about two laps of gas remaining at the end! PHEW! We need some work on the gas gauge!

 

That it for Sears Pointless and Sears Even More Pointless, the trophy is planned to go on a World Tour along with the $500 prize money given to DDR. There you go, we can now offically call ourselves "Professional Race Car Drivers" as we have won real money for our efforts.

 

Next outing for Dirty Duck Racing to defend our Class B Championship is the beautiful, scenic, lush playground of Buttonwillow Raceway, tucked against Interstate 5 near Bakersfield, CA!! That will the the last weekend in June, 29th and 30th. See you there!

 

Mr. Unruly