Arse-Freeze Apalooza

Originally from September 18, 2010

Team Tinyvette is going to enter the car into the Arse-Freeze Apalooza, the LeMons race at Buttonwillow in early December. We'll be back with the whole team, the only change so far being that Geoff, who did a lot of fab work and wrenching for us before and during Arse-Sweat, is also going to drive this time.

Preparations for the race focus mainly on fixing stuff that went bad at the last race:

1. Cooling
2. Oil leaks
3. Transmission

We'll also do a little front-end work. Bushing and boots, basically replacing the last bits of rubber and plastic that was on the car when Alan and I bought it.

Oh, and very important, more decals, to round out the ALMS Corvette look.

Buttonwillow is quite different from Thunderhill, and I think, not the best place for a total rookie to get some racing experience. Buttonwillow is about the same length and has about the same number of turns, and like Thunderhill there is not much you can hit (unlike Infineon), there are two things our guys have t look out for:

1. Many corners are fairly sharp and quick. In traffic, that can be a lot to deal with.
2. Everything around the track is soft, meaning, if you go off the pavement, once the massive cloud of dist settles and we can see where you ended up, there is a good chance you will be upside-down.

That said, there are some really fun parts of the course, such as the long a slightly banked "NASCAR turn", and the high-speed esses, a long front straight, and a fairly high banked tight turn where in my Prelude on street tires I have logged over 1.1G, so who knows what the Tinyvette car will be able to do.

There is one boring aspect to Buttonwillow, and that is the lack of elevation changes.

Here is a video showing the start of last year's race in a car that is in the power and weight range as the Tinyvette car. It also shows a very aggressive and confident driver.



And here are two videos showing what is likely to happen if you go off track. This was at the same race as the above video, but is on the last half of the last lap, with the V8olvo posing a serious challenge to the first place car.

24 Hours of Lemons Buttonwillow 2009 Leader of the race rolls his car on the last lap.


Big Sausage Roll at Buttonwillow 24 Hours of Lemons