Monday, October 8, 2012

The secrets to our success

We have run 3 races and have won 2 trophies and an honorable mention in a car so hopelessly awful no one else runs.  I figure this will be the best race per award ratio we ever will have so this is a good time to share the secrets to our success.
 
Like most teams we came into this completely clueless.  We were so clueless we actually thought that running a 1989 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera was a good idea.  So we go to our first race with random things fixed while other things not touched or looked at and off we ran.  And it ran until it started to act up randomly and around 14 hours into the 15 hour race it stopped running.  So up it gets pushed on the trailer


Even without finishing the race we ended up mid pack and was given an honorable mention nod for IOE.   So we reflected on what we had to do so we could finish the next race, besides fix the car.  Clearly we needed help from a higher power.  God really doesn't have time to answer all the prayers from LeMons Teams.  Luckily being Catholic I know about the Saints. A group of people that God delegates to help out in specific situations.  There isn't a Patron Saint of car racing, at least not yet, so I figured for Lemons the most appropriate Saint for LeMons would be Saint Jude, the Saint for Hopeless Causes.


So next race with a little divine help from the key chain the car runs flawlessly all weekend.  Now with the car running fine we had a new problem, Black Flags.  A pass under yellow, a spin and a bit off the track, a couple cases of mistaken identity.  All these things add up to wasted time hanging out in the penalty box.  This ended up having us mid pack again but we actually walked away with the IOE.

As everyone knows its never the drivers fault for black flags. So the problem must be the car.  The Olds wasn't built to be on a track so it never was taught what it was suppose to do.  But where could it learn what to do or not do.  Easy enough let it learn where the rest of us do.  Bring it to the drivers meeting.

 
After that meeting the car no longer passed cars when it wasn't suppose to, nor did it spin out, nor did it go off track and play in the grass.  Not only that but it seemed our car must have told the other cars cause very few of them decided to do that either,  so few that Jay told us we didn't need a drivers meeting the next day.  At the end of the second day we found ourselves in the top 20 (19th) and we somehow won class C.

So now you know to be successful you need divine intervention and an educated car.

1 comment:

  1. Wow really cool! Pretty sure racers will be inspired with this for them to win.. Every one has charms in every competition they have joined. car bumper stickers

    ReplyDelete