The end of the race was pretty spectacular. On the radio we kept hearing from other teams "I'm gonna have to come in." when we didn't have to come in to get fuel and a driver change. Also too, earlier on in the race the 1st place car died three times in a row on track, so they were out of the running for victory. We were just there circling the track not getting in trouble keeping consistent lap times. However, even though the other cars ahead of us had to keep pitting in for fuel, they were much faster than us on the track, so we did not get the chance to overtake the 4th place car. We finished in 5th place out of 114 cars. Pretty good if you ask me. I had a lot of fun (even though I didn't drive) and will come back next year for sure.

PS. you probably noticed that the posts earlier were pretty SCREWED up. That was because I was in a low cell reception area (1 or 2 bars at max) and was loading the posts via my phone by texting blogger. I have them all fixed up and they're good, so if you want to read back and see what happened during the race, go right ahead.

The green flag for the second day was just dropped. They decided to do the top ten grid lineup, so we started 5th.

The second half of the race begins at 9 again today, and they may line up the top 10 cars in their placing order (1st car 1st 2nd car 2nd...) we think this because they have done that in the past events. Currently we're in 5th, and its pretty tough competition. All the cars above us are faster than us, and even a few below us are faster too. We have gained a lap on the lead car, because he ran out of fuel on the back straight.

The winning car just ran out of fuel on the back straight. Since we share the same radio frequency as them, we could hear all that was going on with the situation. They were trying to solve the problem and the person at the pits asked the car "Where exactly are you?" The car replied "I'm-" And then one of our people said to our driver "Good job! You just ran a 2:23!  And the leading team is dead on the back straight!" The other team's pit person replied to the driver "Sorry I did not copy." then the driver told where he was, and the car started so he was then able to get the car back into the pits to get some more fuel. When I saw him coming into the pits, he was pounding his steering wheel saying shitshitshitshitshit!!!!!

We've now moved from 6th place to 8th place, but we are consistant with just circling the track, so we hope to move up again.

We have kept the car circulating for the past hour and a half, and we have moved up into 6th place. A surprising amount of other teams are either facing technical difficulties with their car or penalties for being bad on the track and getting black flags.

Just recieved the news that we're currently in 13th place in number of laps!

Just pitted in. It went smoothly and thr driver said that it drives amazing, but the brakes are a little too powerful. This is because we changed the stock brake pads for bigger stickier ones, but they are just too powerful for the tires, resulting in locked skidding tires.

Just received a radio message to the driver saying "Good job, just keep following that e30." That means the e30 is doing all of the traffic cutting and we're just following.  Most of the race is traffic management anyways, so this is a good start as there is usually more traffic at the beginning of the race.

Right now I'm sitting in the pits chillin drinkin a snapple listening to the team radio (PG-13) and playing games on my iPhone. All in a recliner chair.

The green flag was just dropped and the race has begun!

The race begins at 9 today, so wish us luck (cross your fingers and toes and arms and legs). Last night was a late night of worrying how we would getboth bumpers on the car TODAY before the race starts. I will try to post when the green flag drops but my signal is spotty so I don't know when I will have signal or not.

This concludes a good day at the track. I unfortunately have lost my voice so I am not feeling so well. We fixed a broken fuel pump, and also have solved an accelerator cable that had slipped off its groove, and left us with no throttle. I have to say that I saw some pretty funny themes out there. Instead of FedEx, there was a car that was called F'edUp. Also, instead of Foster Farms, the theme for the car was Faster Farms with a bunch of stuffed chickens clinging to the wing. When we had to go get our car inspected, they gave us a hard time even though our car was perfectly inside the rules. The inspectors said "Oh! These are the totally cheater 944 team from last year!" (of course that car was perfectly legal as well but they questioned it because it never broke. It just stayed together the whole race). Another reason they were suspicious was because we didn't have the documentation to show that we actually had purchased the car for $100. At the end they let us go with no penalty laps, but said that if they saw us doing too well to be true, then they would send a BMW expert to tear apart our car searching for cheater mods that would have cost much more than $500. The stragety for the race is not to try to go slow so that they dont take us in, but is to totally forget that they would pull us in because we knew if they did then they wouldn't find any cheat mods on the car because there were none.

I am currently at the racetrack. Wow there are some funny cars out here! Lots of porsche 944's and cop fords. Some of them look way over $500 *raised eyebrow*

Crazy mexican dudes are whooping playing trombone, maracas and guitars at a normally peaceful tech inspection session. Wow.

Good progress was made on the car today, and it is now in running order. We have put decals on the sides, top of the windshield, and trunk. Here they are. Also, the tech inspection sticker is pretty funny.

Background change

Hey I decided to change my background because, while the other was awesomer, this one doesn't have to mess with any codes and it improves scrolling smoothness.

24 hrs of LeMons

Over the next few days I will be covering what happens at the 24 Hours Of LeMons. This is a race in which you have to purchase a car and modify it for only $500 (excluding safety equipment ex. roll cages, harnesses, fire extinguisher). Read the rules. Theyr'e hilarious. After all, this race is supposed to be funny. This year our team is called BP Clean Energy Racing. We're running a '83 BMW 533i. We are still in the process of finishing the technical aspects of the car, and wil start decorating tomorrow because the race is on Friday the 6th. We will pour sludge on it to make it as dirty and crude-oil-crusted as possible. To emphasize the effect, we may or may not paint the car white depending on how much time we have on out hands tomorrow.

Team Beer!

We have created our own custom private label of beer for our team. It's called bp Gulf Sludge. It's actually Guinness, but just don't tell anyone. Well, that actually might be a bit hard considering that it says Guinness. Oh well. In all reality all we ever did was take the old label off the side of the bottle and replace it with a custom made one. It's for bribing the Judges (that's right. A capital J) that will evaluate our car to make sure it was in fact under $500 (our total budget now is around $375). The beer might just help the decision go down. Here's a pic.

What it actually says is

bp

Gulf Sludge

a byproduct of gulf operations

DeYoung

Just today I went to the DeYoung Museum, and saw the Birth Of Impressionism exhibit. The art was amazing; originals from France. I got the audio tour and it gave a pretty good explanation of how impressionism emerged from more classical accepted art. If you are in the area, I strongly encourage you to go and check it out; definitely worth the time and money.

Yahoo Radio

Wow. I havent posted here for a while. Well I was a party yesterday, and they had really good music coming out of their computer. I checked what it was playing it. It wasn't iTunes like I expected it to be, but it was Yahoo Radio (kind of like Pandora). The songs were very much like the artists, not bad songs that aren't like them. CHECK IT (I was not paid to say this I promise ;)