This past weekend, I swung by
California Speedway, in the always beautiful town of
Fontana. Actually, I was invited by former neighbors/ Lemons teammates, Mark and Noemi. They were
racing a piece of crap in the Chump Car series. But I think their real mission was to torture me, by watching them race, since I haven't my R compounds haven't had any contact with tarmac for quite some time.
It was their first time in this particular series, and it was actually Noemi's first time
racing wheel to wheel
seat time. Usually, she's in the background crewing for the team or coming out to open
track days in her 240SX.
The weapon for today's battle, is a former
SCCA showroom
stock car Dodge Neon, that's long been retired from pro racing. Finding a new lease on life in the Lemons and Chump Car series.
The Chump car series is different Lemons, even though they still use the same crappy
cars. For one thing, the limit the amount of cars that are allowed to drive. I think there was 30 cars signed up for the weekend, compared to the 80+ cars in Lemons.
But they still have a good number of interesting cars. Like this
Kawasaki ZX14 powered MR2. It definitely sounds amazing when you hear it revving while pulling out of the pits.
Unfortunately, it was plagued with problems for most of the day.
Another rule in Chump car was the drivers are allowed a maximum 2 hours of driving. So keeping time very important. When I drove the
lemons event a few years back in the summer, I drove much longer than 2 hours and that was really tough.
Even a team from the council from the city of Bell represented themselves, showing that taxpayers money is being put to good use.
If you're familiar with the
Discovery channel's show
Deadliest Catch, then you can relate to the them of the
Datsun 280Z.
But if you're not into driving crappy cars, Chump does offer an option. Bring your spec race car and your team, without any penalty from associated with the $500 rule then and join the Exception Class. Sounds like a good time to get good seat time.
So if you're a bit more serious in crap car racing, then the Chump Car series may be for you, for more information visit their
site.
The rest of the photos are
here.
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