Wide World of Sports: The 24 Hours of LeMons

Not Le Mans, LeMons. As in lemons. Read on...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/29/MNT11OHP62.DTL

"Driving in LeMons is nothing like driving in any other competitive race," says Doherty, 29, a computer programmer who lives in Mountain View. "You have really crappy cars that have terrible handling, that break and fall apart and catch fire. There are drivers that are really good, and drivers that are really bad, and 150 cars on the track at once. It's basically trying not to get hit."

Founder and Chief Perpetrator of the 24 Hours of LeMons is Jay Lamm, 36, a San Francisco automotive journalist who was tired of seeing $500,000 cars on the track. So he decided to slice three zeros off that with one novelty race that drew 32 cars. Lamm stayed with it, and the circuit is now a full-time job with an office in Emeryville and a staff of three putting on two dozen races a year nationwide ( www.24hoursoflemons.com). As many as 3,000 spectators pay to watch the wrecks go round.

The cars in the 24 Hours of LeMons are closer to the art cars at Burning Man than they are to the cars in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the famed French sports car race. A LeMons race is won by total number of laps in the allotted time, which can range from 14 hours to 24. There is a prerace inspection, and the judges will dock a team laps if a car looks like more of a cherry than a lemon.

The entrants range from Pinto to Peugeot, and when Cheesy made its debut with a steam-cleaned engine, it was docked 300 laps, meaning it would have to go around the track 300 times before starting at zero. Luckily the judges are also weakened by bribes, so an unopened bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label got the penalty reduced to 30 laps.