Where The Elite Meet to Cheat at Charlotte Motor Speedway

- Sept 24 &25

This past weekend, Ken Brown Racing was back on track at Charlotte Motor Speedway for our first attempt at a 24 Hours of LeMons Series race. Although this race would amount to fourteen hours on the track, it was also much different from our ChumpCar World Series from the spring. Most notably, the race was not fourteen straight hours, but rather 9 hours on Saturday and 5 hours on Sunday. The two different series are like the real Champ Car World Series and Indy Car Racing League… similar but quite different in subtle ways. Another big difference was that it was raining… for almost the entire weekend. So here’s the story:

Since our last race, the KBR Toyota Celica has undergone several changes. The biggest changes were the replacement of the stock radiator with a massive unit from a 1990 Nissan Maxima, a "ram-air" intake system, and new "Tuner" style aerodynamic parts. The improvements were made with the help of dad’s coworkers, Johnny and Earl, and a coworker from my summer internship at Detroit Speed, Ryan Mathews. Andy and I also got to help some this summer, but the big credit goes out to the guys who helped my Dad while Andy and I were at Clemson. Another change was that Glen, who raced with us at the April race, drove with his dad in there LeMons car so Ryan stepped in as our fifth driver. He is an engineer over at Detroit Speed & Engineering who occasionally finds himself behind the wheel of the DSE test cars, largely due to his previous experience in Craftsmen Truck Series, ARCA, and late model racing. Ryan also autocrosses a Corvette. Our driver line up was Andy, Matt, Johnnie, Ryan, and me.

Feeling confident in a much improved racecar, we struck out for CMS early on Saturday morning… in the pouring rain. And it kept raining. We got the car ready, checked in our driver gear, and got ready to race in the wet. I was the first driver, and luckily the rain had subsided. Each driver had an hour and forty five minutes for their Saturday shift, and I was excited to be back behind the wheel. During my shift, the track began to dry once the rain had stopped, and by the end I had a dry groove with to race on. Afterwards, I handed the reigns over to Ryan. He did a good job of keeping the car clean, and going as fast as he could. We were soooooo.. hindered in our laptimes because the carburetor was only running on one barrel… we could only get half throttle. After Ryan, Matt took the wheel, but quickly found himself stalled on the front stretch. The battery in the car died… just like it did in the last race. After some tweaking, we got the carburetor fixed, got a new battery in the car, and determined that the alternator was shot. The hour long stop ate up the rest of Matt’s time in the car, so Johnny hopped in the Celica to get back us back on track. I hopped in the Prius to get a new alternator, which we replaced in the next stop. Andy finished off the day in an exciting session that began with a dry track and ended in a torrential downpour. With almost twenty minutes left in the day’s racing, Andy pulled off… he couldn’t even see the track anymore! We decided to cut our losses, and keep the car in racing condition for the next day.

On Sunday, racing began at 12:15 PM, with Andy at the helm once again. The track was once again wet for Andy, but he did a great job of keeping the car on the road for the rest of the drivers. By the end of his session, the track had fully dried and Ryan was up. Ryan turned the fastest times of the day in this session; the Celica was pretty quick with the freed up carburetor. Matt was in the car next, and got a little extra time to make up for the bad luck in his first session. In his session, he drove in the dry and the wet, which continued for Johnny’s stint. Both driver’s did a good job of keeping the car clean except for a small run in with another car in Johnny’s stint. I had the last hour in the car… once again in the rain and wetness. The Celica could not find grip with the hard Legends car tires, and I fought for traction the entire stint. With full throttle capabilities, I had fun racing people down the straightaways, and wasn’t afraid to race people into the corners since I was the last driver. However, the racer inside of me got the best and I found myself racing hard down the front stretch. The start finish-line lies across my ideal braking point on the front stretch, and in ideal conditions this wouldn’t be a problem. But a big painted section on the road is quite slippery when wet, and I had my foot on the brakes a little too hard. When I stepped on the brake to slow down for the coming corner, I found my front tires locked up and the car hopelessly sliding for the grass on the outside of the turn. Unable to get the car slowed for the turn, I rolled through the grass, turned, and made my way back to the track. Within two corners, I had gotten the black flag… LeMons officials make you come in for a checkup anytime you go off the track. After a sarcastic lecture from the LeMons judges, I made my way back out to the track… only to find that everyone was called into the pits for lightning in the area. I made my last lap around the track watching the lightning strike in the distance and kicking myself for blowing our last competitive lap.

Despite my lackluster finish, the crew was excited to have finished the treacherous race, and thought nothing of my little excursion. We had successfully piloted our little crap-can through a miserably wet fourteen hour race for the second time! After packing up the trailer, we headed home, unpacked the trailer, and got ready to hit the road for Clemson. Four of us had come up to Charlotte for the race (Andy, Matt, Katy, and me), and we needed to get back and get ready for class the next day. In the end, we finished 33rd overall out of 66 cars. We accrued over two hours of time off of the track, and we’re confident that without the gremlins we experienced, we could have been a top 15 contender. This last weekend left our heads filled with ambitions for the next race. We can’t wait to get back out there and prove our metal once again, next time with an even better car and maybe some appropriate rain tires. No matter what, we all had fun and couldn’t have done it without our spotter, Thom, and our gasman, Earl. We couldn’t have done it without the help of Mom doing catering, or Grandpa standing in for timing. And we couldn’t have done it without the driver’s careful piloting of the number 11 KBR Toyota Celica… forever "Last and Delirious"