This year marks the 4th LeMons NHMS Halloween Hooptiefest I’ve been able to attend in some kind of Saab, and as usual it provides an intense combination of weather, track variation, and broken cars. As we have come to expect the unexpected in this racing series, it’s always a little nerve racking going to New Hampshire. Our history has always been speckled with crashes, spectactular failures, freezing cold temperatures, long hauls, and fortunately spaghetti (thanks to the pasta dinner the Alfa team awards everyone after day one). We got a few jars of homemade sauce from our buddy down the street, christened ‘BobbyD’s Bitchin Sauce’ and headed up for a weekend we knew would be a tough one. Thanks for the sauce Dale, tangy!
The LeMons NHMS Road Course
The road course at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway is small, about 1.6 miles. Driving it feels like you are perpetually caught in a mixmaster, and it has some massive transitions when going on and off of the road course. Unless your car is set up for rally, expect to be bottoming out as you come down off of the downhill section, and expect your drivetrain to be massively torque-loaded as you pull out of the final turn back up onto the oval section. Black patches of fresh asphalt can be very slippery, but hard to avoid when you are sandwiched between a 1950’s Chrysler New Yorker and a Turbocharged Volvo station wagon.
One particular stressful feature of the LeMons NHMS experience is the way the track goes from very wide to very narrow. When you have 120 cars on track powered by built M50 6cyls, Geo Metro 3cyls, and everything in between, there is a propensity to go 5 wide when going onto the super speedway track. Of course, what you get at the end is a tight bottleneck, requiring everyone to sort out and line up. Being New England, however, this is a major issue with some drivers so stress levels are high, and they stay there.
The Competition
Because it’s the last race in the New England Region before the snow falls (we narrowly avoided it this year, with snow falling shortly after our departure), just about every team on the eastern seaboard makes it out. For the 2016 race, 120 teams registered to enter the melee. The field was huge and full of very fast Euro’s. BMW’s, Volvo’s, Mercedes’s comprised most of Class A, putting down smoking fast laptimes and keeping us slower guys always watching our mirrors.
Some of the other teams brought some wacky stuff, including a double engine Audi with a 2-stroke snowmobile engine in the back seat, a 1952 Chrysler New Yorker, and of course my car, a BBQ smoking Saab 900. It was joined immediately by 3 other Saab teams that we stuffed into two garage spots. Full Nelson Racing was there with the still-experimental Saab 96, powered by a 3cyl Metro engine and turbocharged with a BMW N54 turbine. Combined with water/methanol injection and a finicky electric water pump, the complex car had a hell of a time keeping on track, but ran beautifully all day Sunday.
Saabs of Anarchy bested their last showing by hundreds of laps, since I believe they only did around 20 at Thompson in their freshly built Saab 9000.
The PA Saab Maab team, captained by our own Gary Reider ran very well, and only balked with a blown transmission at the very end of Day 1. Their spare was in and buttoned up before 10pm, and they climbed well up the time sheets throughout Sunday.
We were stunned to find that our ramshackle and diverse group wasn’t alone, with two more Saabs in the paddock to meet us on track. One was a somewhat confused C900 team that had come over from Chumpcar. They had major issues passing tech due to their fuel setup and rollcage layout. They eventually made it out, but only after suffering through the torrential downpour and generally crappy weather Friday and Saturday. The other Saab team nearly had our eyes fall out when we saw it. I suppose the story went that the dealer was going to accept such a low trade-in on a 9-5 wagon that the owner decided it would be better put to use as a race car.
We can’t disagree. He took his 07 Aero Wagon to the shop, put a cage in it, basically left it completely stock, and the team ran well all weekend.
The Weather
As has come to be expected, the weather was pretty arduous for the very northward Loudon, NH Lemons NHMS finale. Friday started out OK, with the warmest weather I had ever seen at the race. Well up into the mid 60’s, we were able go through tech and BS inspection in t-shirts, earning our Vermin Supreme (he grand marshalled the race on Saturday) bribe stencil with a crock pot of slow cooked ribs. The rain started around 1 or 2pm steadily, causing anyone waiting for their tech inspection that wasn’t dressed as a longshoreman to soak through to the bone. I am pretty sure my shoes are still wet from the weekend. Saturday was a continuation, starting out damp and moving towards full on deluge by mid-day. The rain was the lynchpin in making my stint terrifying, as all the grip I used to have was gone, as was my visibility.
Sunday started out damp, but also a perfect combination of the freezing icy cold we were familiar with, and a cutting painful wind that blew right through us. Even in our garage, the open doors created a venturi current making us feel like we were caught in an arctic windtunnel. As with many years past, the track’s bathroom remained our only solace from the cold wind, if only momentarily. Eventually the sun came out and provided some warmth, and thankfully the weather was once again bearable come time to pack up.
The Race
With the ribs seasoned and installed in the BBQ cooking box, Saturday started with Dave Baker behind the wheel. Doing well, he put together what he had learned from Thompson into a solid stint, maintaining good position. By the end of his 2hrs, we were up to 5th or 6th in our class, and 18th overall out of 120. Next to go in was Eric Ruizzo, another Banchwerks native and FWD rally car driver. He was able to practice on Friday to get some time in the car and on the track before doing it for real, and it helped. He acclimated quickly and continued to run good times, keeping us well ahead of the pack. That was until we blew up an axle. When running well, the last thing you want to hear come in on the radio is “carbeque carbeque…I broke…I think it’s an axle”, but those words came in loud and clear over the staticky word soup broadcasted from the other teams.
When the car was on the flatbed, we quickly rustled up all the tools to do an axle, arranged them on the table, and waited. Instead of the car coming in on the tow hook as usual, they insisted it be loaded onto a flatbed. That was the beginning of the end for our very low front airdam, which would scrape and bend being loaded and unloaded, crash into the ground hundreds of times on transitions and bumps, totally nail a heavy cone at high speed, and find the back of a car or two ultimately snapping it in half by the last stint.
The axle went quick, as the team was organized and mechanically inclined (even though they’d never done this job before). Losing around 40min, we got back out on track and continued to do laps. The BBQ box was running on the cool side due to the cool moist air, so we decided to extend cooking time a bit. Third up was me, just as the sky began to open up. Unfortunately the GoPro was experiencing SD card errors, so I swapped the cards as he came in to the garage to pull the meat off. I have never raced in the rain before, so nervous was an understatement. Few teams were experiencing major trouble this early on, so I was about to get on track in the heavy rain with about 100 other cars.
Of course as soon as I get out there, the windshield fogged up so intensely that I lost sight of the brake lights of the cars in front of me. With no point of reference out of the front, I was trying to find the side of the track in order to make it back to the pits. About that time, a slightly out of control BMW coming in fast on the inside was unable to account for my unpredictable blindness. They subsequently ground my driver side mirror off in the process of going around. No point in looking back now. At this point I was in shock and about to crap my pants, and managed to get back to the pits the next lap to get a fresh windshield cleaning and a rag on a stick.
I was able to finish the stint as the track dried out, slipping and sliding around as the black asphalt patches felt like ice. Jesse Whitsell was in to finish the day, and did so with only one spin into the mud and turf. We self reported all weekend to avoid the judges clamping down on our belligerence. Generally if you make it to the penalty box before they have time to black flag you, they are more lenient. This works sometimes, sometimes it doesn’t, either way we finished the day battered and wet, but without any critical issues to fix. Our Saab was greeted with the Saab Maab’s engine already on the hoist, as they nuked one of the internal bearing housings.
The ribs went well, although the weather was cold we were able to cook them nearly all the way through. Unfortunately due to the weather, we had to finish them in a stove, but all was well. We put on some ‘BobbyD’s Bitchin Sauce’ and had some manifold BBQ for dinner after a long day.
Day 2 started with Jesse back behind the wheel, getting hit early on by a heavy Mercedes on the left rear quarter. We ended up able to pop it back out, but the fender flares were definitely all rearranged on the left side at this point.
Baker tag-teamed in around 11am, and had a few small on-track tangles but nothing too bad. Eric was 3rd out on Sunday, after a very fast pit stop that we could be proud of, allowing our climb back up the leader board to gain some energy. That was followed subsequently by another axle failure, basically removing us from all contention. We managed to fix this in only 20min and get the car back out with Eric feeling bad about his new ‘Breaker Boy’ status. Either way, we were still going to try and salvage the best finish we could.
When his stint was coming to an end, I offered eEuro’s own Josh Menke my stint, so that I could help herd the cats in the garage and pack. He was able to set some blistering laps and handled traffic well, even with the car in completely conserve mode. At some point the exhaust broke off, so he came in at the end with it dragging on the ground. Oh well! We finished the race in the top 5th in our class, 15th place, and somewhere in the 40’s overall. A total of 411 laps means we did 657 race miles, not bad.
It’s now Wednesday, and I still feel the drain that the weekend took. With the real possibility of this being The Carbeque’s last race, it was a race that symbolized its entire campaign. Ups and downs, but with ribs at the end, and some pretty cool photos of the process. Check out the whole photo gallery [Here] and be sure to check us out and follow along as these events happen on Facebook and Instagram!
