The 24 Hours of LeMons Sears Pointless race last weekend was host to 148 teams racing $500 cars. Once the checkered flag dropped on Saturday night, then the action switched from the world famous twelve turn technical road course of Infineon Raceway to a sloped four lane wooden straight track for teams racing $5 cars –pinewood derby cars.

Continue reading Pinewood Derby with a twist of LeMons

We here at S:S:L have always been huge fans of the Corvette Z06 and have said that the Z06 is the best track car of the entire Corvette lineup.  The folks at Chevy have taken an already incredible track car and made it even better with the 2011 Corvette Z06 Carbon Limited Edition.  Limited to just 500 units, the Z06 Carbon is sure to sell out quickly to both track junkies and collectors alike.

To improve on the standard Z06, Chevy has fitted the Z06 Carbon with Brembo carbon ceramic brakes (first seen on the ZR1), black 20-spoke wheels, magnetic selective ride control, and enhanced cooling.  The Z06 Carbon also features black headlight buckets and mirrors, a ZR1 style rear spoiler, carbon fiber hood, and carbon fiber splitter/rockers. 

If you aren’t one of the lucky 500 to pick up a Z06 Carbon, Chevy will be offering the Z07 performance package on the standard Z06 which includes all the upgraded mechanical goodies that the Z06 Carbon has.  The carbon fiber goodies will be available through the optional CFZ package.

No pricing has been announced yet, but deliveries are expected to begin this summer.

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Krider Racing/Speed:Sport:Life wins the “good class” at the 24 Hours of LeMons at Infineon raceway this weekend in their Big Sausage Pizza Delivery themed Acura Integra.
Continue reading Krider Racing Wins the “Good Class” at LeMons!

Krider Racing/Speed:Sport:Life finished the first day of the 24 Hours of LeMons Infineon in second place out of 147 entries. The team POS FedEx (F’edUp) themed BMW is one lap ahead of the Big Sausage Pizza Delivery themed car with eight more hours of racing to go tomorrow. Krider Racing has to thank I/O Port Racing Supplies, Atomic Speedware, Carbotech Brakes, and ST Suspensions for a great running car.

We’ll give you updates on the event at Speed:Sport:Life as the results come in.

Photography by Allison Shea Malone

Krider Racing, aka Big Sausage Pizza Delivery, is busy delivering pizzas to the other LeMons teams tonight as “tech inspection day” came to a close at the 24 Hours of LeMons at Infineon Raceway this weekend.
Continue reading Speed:Sport:Life/Krider Racing at LeMons Infineon

The Infineon Raceway garages show the calm before the storm. The ChumpCar World Series race will begin Saturday at 9:00 a.m. officially kicking off the 2010 crap-can racing season. Race teams from all over the West Coast have decended on Infineon to try battle it out on the historic racetrack. Infineon has been home to such racing series as NASCAR, IndyCar, American Le Mans Series and now it will be home to the infamous ChumpCar, endurance racing for $500 cars. Yes, that is Danika Patrick standing next to the Speed Sport Life entry.

Continue reading ChumpCar Infineon!

Christmas was just a few days ago and for some reason Santa missed the Krider Racing headquarters (rumor has it, they’re on the naughty list). However, most Speed Sport Life readers consider the real Santa Claus to come in the form of the FedEx man. And that was just who showed up in the nick of time with a box full of racing goodies for our preparations for the upcoming ChumpCar World Series race at Infineon January 9-10, 2010.

We scored a cool fabricated safety cage for our nitrogen tank to run our air tools from Capital City Motorsports, a pair of FIA rated Piloti driving shoes (great for heel toe downshifts), some Carbotech brake pads (for going super deep into the corners), some “FUEL” stickers for our pit crew to go on expired helmets (per ChumpCar rules) from Figstone Graphics and last, but not least, new nomex socks from I/O Port Racing Supplies.

So, what did you get under the “racing” tree this year?

Sure, we all know that you would probably be racing in F1 already if there wasn’t that small complication about you not having a racing license. Guess what? Your endless excuses are now null and void. Time Attack is a venue where a regular guy (or gal) can go out and race on the big tracks. That’s right, no parking lot racing here. These events are held on real race tracks that you’ve been reading about in magazines and playing on Gran Turismo for years. This is the real deal.

Time Attack is a timed racing event where you take your car onto the track, do your best impression of Aryton Senna on a qualifying lap, and try to put down a blisteringly fast time. Your best lap time is compared to that of people in your class (similar cars, similar mods). The one with the fastest lap time picks up a trophy and never ending glory.

Continue reading Racer Boy: Time Attack, or How to Race on a Real Track Without Totaling Your Car

So, you watched Travis Pastrana in his Subaru at the X Games and now you’re convinced that you can get your Mom’s Outback at least six feet off the ground if you were just given a dirt jump and the chance.  Well, it’s time to put down your PS3 game controller, turn off MotorStorm, and borrow a helmet.  Rallycross is the closest thing you’re probably going to get to the X games without any money or talent. 

Rallycross is similar to the more popular autocross, based on the fact that there is one car out on the course at a time racing against the clock.  The course is delineated by cones in a large empty area.  The important difference is that Rallycross is a race on dirt.  Yes, you and your car will get dirty.  The other main difference between the two sports is your autocross time is based on your single fastest lap around the track (like qualifying), whereas Rallycross is set up like a stage rally.  Each lap is a separate stage, and each stage counts toward your total and final time. 

As a total newb, I made the mistake of blowing a muddy corner at a Rallycross and sliding off the racecourse.  I had to go into reverse (once I finally found it, Goddamn Volkswagen!) to get back on the track.  I lost a crap load of time farting with the tranny, but since I was a seasoned autocrosser, I really didn’t care.  “I’ll get ‘em on the next lap,” I said -wrong!  That was when I learned the all important lesson about Rallycross, every lap/stage counts.  Just like in the bigs, like in the WRC.

Continue reading Racer Boy: Rallycrossing, “Let’s get dirty, Baby!”

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It’s sad but true: when I was a kid, Internet access pretty much didn’t exist. I didn’t even start reading USENET until 1990, at which point I was already eighteen years old. In the pre-Web days, if you wanted to know something, you went to the library. If you were lucky, the answer was in a book. If you couldn’t find a book with the answer, you were more or less screwed. For example, my elementary-school library had a copy of “The Car Book 1971″ that had all the prices of new cars from 1971, and I memorized the book to the point that I could instantly recall the prices and specs of every new car sold that year. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the same book from 1972, which meant that as far as I knew, there were no cars sold in 1972. Or they were all free. Or they were all $1,999. There was simply no way to know.

The arrival of the Information Age has made that kind of knowledge starvation a thing of the past, with a few exceptions. One of those exceptions is information on amateur and entry-level-professional sedan racing. Those who talk about it on the Internet don’t really know; those who know aren’t telling, for a variety of reasons we’ll discuss below. When I started my racing “career” a few years ago, I had to learn about the costs and difficulties of racing firsthand, at my own considerable expense, and my conversations with other racers have indicated that this state of affairs is nearly universal.

Universal it may be, but it isn’t right. So in this episode of Avoidable Contact, I’m going to give you a brief tour of amateur and entry-level-professional sedan racing. Specifically, we’re going to talk about requirements, costs, and results. I can’t put you in the seat of a real race car — only you can do that for yourself — but I can at least give you a reasonable idea of what’s involved. There are resources, both print and Web, which claim to tell the truth about the costs of racing, but trust me: most of them are either pursuing an agenda or making bizarre assumptions regarding your access to things like frame jigs, TIG welders, and $100 Hayabusa engines. Since most people can’t actually do things like “knock together” an SCCA GT-2 tube chassis, a lot of the advice and information that’s out there might as well be fantasy.

To keep things simple and comparable, most of the costs discussed here will be “rent-a-ride” costs; I will discuss ownership costs in a future column, assuming there’s any interest. We’ll start with the 24 Hours of Lemons and go as far as the Speed World Challenge. So, without further ado, let’s climb to the top of the “Pyramid Of Speed” and see what’s there.

Continue reading Avoidable Contact #25: Exploring the pyramid of speed — the real costs and stories behind entry-level sedan racing.