24 Hours of LeMons B.F.E. Gran Prix: Inspection Day

The Judges rule that we cheated!

The Friday before a LeMons race involves the Tech and BS Inspections.

Tech inspection is pretty straight forward. Your safety gear is checked out and the car is given a general inspection to make sure nothing is too terribly wrong with it. Our car passed with flying colors.

The BS Inspection was where things got interesting. We had to convince the race Judges that we really did only spend $500 on our car. That clean and shinny engine bay with all those new looking parts? That was really just the result of diligent prep work! We never would have broken the budget by installing new belts, gaskets and hoses!

Our Badge of Honor.

The Judges didn't buy it and slapped us with two penalties. The first was sticking our group of rank amateurs into the fastest racing class. Welcome to Class A, the land of BMWs, Porsches, Mazda RX-7s and other performance cars. Our dreams of beating up on AMCs and a Checker Cab were vanquished. We were also given a 10 lap penalty that made things even worse.

But wait! There has to be a way out of this, right?

With Inspection passed, the team is ready to race.

Thankfully, LeMons encourages bribing the judges to get your penalties reduced. Beer, bourbon  and cigars do wonders. With our bribe, the penalty laps were reduced from 10 to five. Unfortunately, we couldn't bribe our way out of Class A. We did; however, get a classy "Bribed" license-plate stenciled on our hood.

With inspection over, we headed back to the Paddock, had some dinner (lovingly made by my fiancé), drank homebrew and scotch, and tried to get some sleep before the big day.

Up next: The Trifecta of Suck