Posted by leo | Posted in Team Information | Posted on 04-12-2009
This story started like many for me. I was getting bored of what passes for motorsport in my hometown. AutoX was fun but ultimately I felt unsatasfied devoting an entire weekend of work for 3-6 minutes of wheel time. After almost 7 years doing it, it was clear I wasn’t going to be a shining talent at it either. I needed a new project. I had recently finally started going to HPDE driver education days at the nearest local race track (Portland International Raceway) and this was definately something I wanted to get more involved in. There is a great conference race series that participates here in the NorthWest (ICSCC). I looked breifly at getting into that but decided I didn’t really have the funds to make that happen. I was also not all that thrilled about joining into a series that depended so much on money to get a winning car. Money that I wouldn’t reasonabily be able to devote to racing for many more years.
I looked into building a kit car (Lotus 7, I will have you some day) or doing some kind of extreme build of my weekend driver (1993 Mazda RX7) but ultimately I’m no mechanic. I can keep my cars running and bolt upgrades on but I’m not a fabricator. This also wouldn’t help me get any more seat time and for me, thats the name of the game.
A friend of mine (Matt) was participating in a new form racing that I had heard about but up until then, had not considered joining, The 24 Hours of LeMons. This seemed like the direction to go. Costs were split between the team. Heck, the car couldn’t even be worth more than $500! Wheel time? You get to run all weekend long.
The same week that I had seriously considered getting into lemons, I got an e-mail out of the blue from a buddy of mine. He had picked up a 1987 Mazda Rx7 GXL with the intentions of restoring it to sell. It turns out it wasn’t in as good as condition as he had hoped and had been taking up room in his driveway for a couple months. He wanted it gone and the price was right (free!).
I had a place to drive, and a car, now all I needed was a team. I made a short list of all my least rice most race friends and called us all together. Turns out I wasn’t the only one who though this was a good idea.
