KRIDER RACING WINNING (AND ROLLING) INTEGRA
Click here to check out The Big Sausage Pizza Delivery compilation on YouTube
CHUMPCAR CHAMPIONS AND LEMONS CHAMPIONS!
ChumpCar Auto Club Speedway
After a tough second place finish on Saturday, Krider Racing went out and crushed the competition on Sunday bringing home victory at ChumpCar with a six lap lead! Check out media from the event:
Jalopnik Race Coverage
Napa Valley Register
Speed Sport Life
Racer Boy
Car Domain Blogs
Jalopnik
LeMons Sears Pointless
We raced against 148, yes I said 148, teams at Infineon and won the "good class" and finished second overall after a fierce battle in Sonoma. Check out the coverage on Speed Sport Life.
ChumpCar
Krider Racing ran the ChumpCar 24 hour race at Willow Springs. The team was in second with a quarter of the race in the books. During the night they slipped to fourth and then battled when the sun came up for a podium finish. Three hours before the checkered flag the head gasket blew on the Integra (again). Check out the coverage on Speed Sport Life.
24 Hours of LeMons
After being victorious at Altamont in 2008, Krider Racing came back to the 24 Hours of Lemons to try to be the first team to win the series twice. At Buttonwillow in 2009, Krider Racing led the first day, battled back and forth with Evil Genius Racing (winners of the 25 Hours of Thunderhill 2008) and then Krider Racing had the lead on the last lap of the race. The battle between the two drivers was epic and the pressure was on. Three quarters around the track at Lost Hill, Randy Krider rolled the Acura onto its roof in spectacular fashion giving the win to Evil Genius. Krider Racing still picked up a class win and, of course, a great story. Thanks to I/O Port Racing Supplies for keeping our driver safe.
CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT THE CRASH ON JALOPNIK
CLICK HERE FOR POST RACE RECAP ON JALOPNIK
CLICK HERE TO SEE DAY ONE RESULTS WITH US LEADING
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE TECH INSPECTION OF THE ACURA
CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT THE POST INSPECTION ON JALOPNIK
CLICK HERE TO SEE IN CAR FOOTAGE FROM LAPPED TRAFFFIC
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE UBER GALLERY ON JALOPNIK
CLICK HERE TO SEE A PHOTO OF US AS THE CLASS WINNER ON JALOPNIK
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE CAR DOMAIN BLOG WRITE UP
CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT BIG SAUSAGE GIRLS IN THE SUN
CLICK HERE TO SEE US FEATURED ON MOTO IQ
CLICK HERE TO SEE OUR BIG SAUSANGE SHIRTS ON JALOPNIK
A huge thanks needs to go out the entire Krider Racing crew for an excellent job at Buttonwillow.
Below is a photo of the Racer X car doing a very Racer X thing and punting Rob Krider, sending him into an insane drift (for a front wheel drive car). Krider made the save of the weekend and unbelievably pulled this one out. A lap later Rob re-passed Racer X (cleanly) and never looked back.
The following is a gallery detailing some of the Big Sausage Pizza Delivery adventure at Buttonwillow.
It was simply epic...
Thank you to our sponsors:
CLICK HERE TO READ ROB KRIDER'S "RACER BOY" BLOG ON
LEMONS AT SPEED SPORT LIFE
THE STORY BELOW DETAILS THE KRIDER RACING 24 HOURS OF LEMONS WIN AT ALTAMONT RACEWAY
24 HOURS OF LEMONS SF
CHAMPIONS 2008
24 Hours of LeMons
The old saying goes, “I’d rather be lucky than good.”
by Rob Krider
As published in Motoracing Magazine
Photos by Rob Diehl, Christine Gaskins and Steve Kuhtz
Dateline: Altamont 2008. It was my second attempt at LeMons. My first attempt, was a fifth place finish at Thunderhill in 2007 with three broken wheels studs driving an SE-R (oh, here come the excuses again). I knew that the next LeMons, no matter what car I was going to be sitting in, it would have brand new wheel studs.
For this event the Krider Racing team decided to build and entire new lemon, as our old one had gone sour. Our team theme would come from the Quentin Tarantino film "Death Proof" based on the wicked Chevy Nova from the film driven by the menacing Stuntman Mike. After searching for a Nova for the race, we ended up settling on a black 1991 Acura Integra. We got the car through a CHP impound/lien sale for $150 dollars from Eppler Towing in Madera. We paid too much. When we pulled the car off our trailer we noticed there was a lot of oil left on the trailer, like a lot of oil, like four to five quarts of it. The enormous gash in our oil pan was not a good start to our racecar build or a 24 hour endurance race.
Besides a new oil pan, the first thing on our minds was safety. Luckily for us, Autopower made a six point bolt in cage for an Integra. One call to Autopower and our roll cage issues were solved. The cage arrived and bolted in perfectly and effortlessly, except for one small pesky eight legged problem: black widows. The car was infested with them. As we ripped out the interior for the cage we hammered, stepped on, screamed and lit on fire at least eleven black widow spiders. Finally one of our team members was bit near his left eyelid. He survived, but the left side of his face looked like he’d been in the octagon with Chuck Liddell. I wasn’t sure his helmet would fit anymore.
Phase2Motortrend provided a Circuit Sports quick release for our steering wheel to aid in a quick driver exit. To finish off our safety concerns we had NASA safety inspector Alan Blaine from Blaine Fabrication in Santa Cruz take a look at our car. He scrutinized every inch of our cage, our seat installation and most importantly how the shoulder harnesses routed over our HANS devices (yes our little Lemons team uses HANS). The biggest thing Blaine got on us about were the many holes in our floorboard and firewall. He didn’t like them. He made use fill every single itty bitty hole with rivets and RTV to keep exhaust fumes out of the interior. Blaine is a stickler, but once he gives your car the green light, you know your car is safe.
The next thing to do on our “Win LeMons” list was make sure our little Acura/Honda motor lasted. Historically at LeMons, Hondas blow head gaskets about two hours before the finish of every race (just ask Team #11, Eyesore Pimpin’). This is where our team had a secret weapon, some oil additive called HP 234. What is this horse pucky you ask? Let me explain. I ran a car at Laguna Seca which had brand new Mobil 1 in the engine and after an hour of race driving the oil looked like it needed to be changed. I put in new Mobil 1, added a little bit of HP 234 anti-friction modifier then ran a car for eight punishing hours at Thunderhill. I looked at the oil and it appeared brand new. From that moment on, I was a believer that HP 234 in combination with Mobil 1 works (previous to my own test I thought those types of things were snake oil elixirs).
Krider Racing is sponsored by ST Suspensions so they gave us the 411 on how to make an Acura Integra corner on rails and still stay within our $500 budget. Kuhtz Diehl Insurance and Financial Services provided helmet radios to communicate between spotters and drivers. Figstone Graphics did all of the numbers and graphics on the car while Factory Tire mounted and balanced our tires for us. Bay Ex courier ran all over northern California getting random parts from different Pick-n-Pulls including an entire parts car just in case. Bay Ex also made a last minute banzai run to I/O Port Racing Supplies (who totally hooked us up) in Lafayette to fix some transponder woes.
After about ten thousand e-mails debating things like the best spark plug under $2, eBay deals on Chinese headers for the bargain price of $9.00 (but $50.00 worth of shipping) and what tire pressure to run, race day finally arrived.
Our game plan was to make laps, stay out of trouble and not wreck the car. Our first driver, Steve Kuhtz did that job perfectly. He commented on the radio, “I’m not racing anyone at all, I’m just trying not to hit anybody or get hit.” We came in under yellow and did a quick driver change, fuel fill and put our second driver, Rob Diehl in the car. He finished the first day without incident (well unless you count the time when the Fantasy Junction entry tried to go two wide in the esses with Diehl and Diehl put them into the tires). At the end of the first day, without racing anyone for position and by just making laps we were 5th out of 90 teams.
Sunday morning we let our third driver start, Keith Kramer, who kept it clean until he got spun into the infield by a shot to our left rear quarter panel. This is a touchy area to get hit because that is where the fuel filler door is on an Integra. With most of the corners at Altamont, left turns, a lot of teams (who had run AMP before) moved their gas filler away from the left quarter panel to avoid disqualifying gas leaks.
We came in under yellow and were in fifth place but 10 laps down. I jumped in for the last stint and we had a perfect pit stop. We were back on track before the yellow was lifted. Our team had been the nice guys and stayed out of trouble for three quarters of the race. Now it was time to try and get back our laps.
With the field somewhat thinned out due to mechanical issues the track was open and much faster. I did my best to make up as many laps as possible while my brother, Randy, acted as my angel in the sky and spotted for me in the stands. If he said it was clear, I went for it. If he told me to slow down and follow someone, I did what he said. As fast as we were going one car ahead of us, the #11 CRX, wasn’t going to let me take back 10 laps. Then as luck would have it the 11 car blew a motor (no HP 234 in it). That put us into second position but still about three laps down. We were chasing the first place #7 car and there was only about an hour to go in the race. I could catch and pass the car every twenty minutes under green but the numerous yellow flags from other teams crashing were hurting my chances to make up laps before time ran out. Again, as luck would have it, the #7 car ran out of gas about four minutes before the race ended. I passed them in the banking and waved goodbye as their driver sat stalled and out of fuel in the infield.
The checkered flag came out and with a lot of preparation, planning and a truck load of luck Krider Racing won the 24 Hours of LeMons at Altamont 2008.
Unfortunately during the race the fun atmosphere of LeMons was marred by the tragic death of Court Summerfield in the #39 car from Alameda. His Volvo lost control and struck a wall head on. The race was stopped Saturday evening and then began again Sunday morning once an investigation was completed.
For the winning the race Krider Racing was awarded $1,500 dollars in nickels. The Krider Racing team immediately donated all of the money to Court Summerfield’s family.
CHECK OUT THE "BAY AREA UNCOVERED" VIDEO FEATURE WITH OUR VICTORY AT THE END
Lemons on Comcast
