Part one had the duct tape and the checkered flag. This is the part with the charts: 329 laps of transponder data, and a pit-wall log kept in pencil by people who were also holding fuel jugs.
Bottom line, up front
Car #86 was classified 51st overall and 9th in Class C at Capitol Offense: 329 laps, 658 miles, nine stops, and the first top-ten class finish in team history. It is also the most laps the car has ever run in a weekend, past Carolina’s 265 by a margin we’d call comfortable if Saturday had been.
The report in three sentences: on Saturday the car was running 51st at eleven o’clock, got used as a brake in the Carousel, and spent two hours and forty-one minutes stationary for leaks before ending the day 78th. On Sunday it made zero unplanned stops, ran its longest stint ever at a three-per-cent spread, and climbed 27 places to finish exactly where it had been when it got hit. The duct tape held 70 psi for a day and a half, which is more than we can say for most of our hoses.
Finish
P51 overall
Class C
P9
Laps / miles
329 / 658 mi
Race time
14:00 two days
Best lap
1:43.4
Best-lap avg
69.6 mph
The course, and the sky
Summit Point opened in October 1969 in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle, ninety minutes from the shop, which after Kentucky counts as a home race. Two miles, ten corners: a 2,900-foot front straight that gives a 2,900-pound Accord time to reflect, and the Carousel, officially Turns 6 and 7. Turn 7 is its exit. Most teams use it as a braking zone. One used us.
The sky did nothing, with conviction. The airport twelve miles up the road in Martinsburg logged 34°F at dawn Saturday and 33 on Sunday, highs of 61 and 63, fair skies, no rain. We’d packed for rain, which is the traditional way to prevent it. Sunday’s nine o’clock green was near 40 degrees. Every report since April has ended with “plan the cold start.” It passed, with four warm-up laps.
01The shape of the weekend
Every flying lap, both days. In and out laps removed.
Saturday opens in the cold-track band, and by lap 20 the car is in the 1:47s. Laps 23 through 27 sag toward two minutes, which is the Carousel, and at 11:03 the chart goes quiet for fifty-one minutes.
Saturday’s middle is Driver B’s first real stint: 53 laps around a 1:54 median in a car that was dripping and a radio that kept asking about it, split by the duct-tape stop.
Sunday is the shape we’ve been trying to draw all year. The morning stint is slow and ragged on purpose: 33 degrees at dawn, four warm-up laps, three yellows, a nine-per-cent spread. From ten o’clock on, every stint sits in a band six seconds wide or less, and the weekend’s best lap, a 1:43.4 at 11:40, arrives with the oil at 203, the transmission at 200, and the duct tape at a temperature it declined to share. The model said 1:40; we’ll take the 3.4 seconds as the price of 329 laps of company and a hose made of tape.
02Two seats
Eight stints.
On the letters. Our newest driver is Driver B from here on. Driver A was entered and couldn’t make it: last-minute conflicts, the kind a day job produces. Those conflicts are exactly why we want sponsors: so this can be the day job. Section 07 has the people working on it.
| Stint | Green | Seat | Laps | Best | Median | Spread | Running |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S1 | Sat 10:00 | Driver C | 34 | 1:45.9 | 1:51.2 | 6.8% | 63 → 51 |
| S2 | Sat 11:56 | Driver B | 53 | 1:47.5 | 1:54.1 | 6.3% | 87 → 85 |
| S3 | Sat 3:30 | Driver C | 41 | 1:44.2 | 1:48.3 | 5.7% | 88 → 78 |
| S4 | Sun 9:00 | Driver B | 27 | 1:45.8 | 1:53.4 | 9.0% | 78 → 74 |
| S5 | Sun 10:12 | Driver C | 49 | 1:43.4 | 1:48.0 | 5.2% | 74 → 68 |
| S6 | Sun 12:08 | Driver B | 58 | 1:45.4 | 1:49.0 | 3.0% | 68 → 58 |
| S7 | Sun 2:08 | Driver C | 26 | 1:44.5 | 1:48.2 | 2.4% | 58 → 53 |
| S8 | Sun 3:08 | Driver B | 24 | 1:45.3 | 1:51.2 | 5.5% | 53 → 51 |
Driver B came to Summit Point with a band of 1:52–1:58, written to be moved. Saturday moved it. By Sunday his two-hour stint ran 58 flying laps at a 1:49.0 median with a three-per-cent spread, within a second a lap of Driver C in the same air. The last stint is slower because the field was under yellow every few laps and the job was to bring it home. He did.
Driver C, who ran Kentucky alone, turned all thirteen of the weekend’s laps under 1:45, the best lap on each day, and a 2.4 per cent spread in his last stint, which on this team counts as metronomic. He also drove the first hour, the cold one, and the one that got hit. He has asked about the rotation.
Bowling Green’s report asked what minute ninety of a stint looks like. Sunday’s third stint ran 120 minutes; minute ninety was a 1:47.5.
03The climb
Overall position after every lap.
The car started 63rd, was 51st by eleven o’clock, and 51st when the Carousel happened. Two stops dropped it to 97th; the afternoon clawed back nineteen places.
Sunday is a straight line with a slope: 78th at the green, 74th, 68th and 58th at the three stops, 53rd when the black flag parked everyone, 51st at the checkered. Twenty-seven places, none in a single pass, all because the car never stopped unless we told it to, and once, when the tire card said stop, we told it not to. In endurance racing the way up is mostly other people’s way down, and on Sunday we did the one thing that lets you collect: we kept circulating.
04The ledger, and where the weekend went
Nine stops, and an hour the transponder slept through.
The transponder says the second Saturday stop lasted 32 minutes; the pit log says 12:22 in, 2:01 out, which is 99. Both are right: the race was stopped for about an hour that afternoon, which is why a 99-minute stop cost eleven places instead of fifty. It’s the only stoppage this season timed in our favor; we’d like to thank whoever caused it, provided it wasn’t us.
- 51 minStop 1, 11:03 Saturday: the penalty, and the first look at the line. The other team’s fault, which in Lemons still earns everyone a conversation; the Accusump line had taken the hit.
- 97 minStop 2, 12:22: the line again, and the duct tape. The log says “Pit for Accusump repair.” The fuel line and the wrap went on here and stayed on.
- 7 minStop 3, 3:30 p.m.: fuel and the driver change. The only planned stop of the day. It ran to plan, which the crew found disorienting.
- 12 minStop 4, 3:45 p.m.: one more leak. Found, fixed, back out by four.
- 29 minSunday, 10:03, 11:57 and 1:54: three planned stops. Fuel and a driver each time. The first began with a request the strategy document had not modeled, answered by a full-course yellow; the third logged the fronts at 43 and 40 psi hot.
- 11 + 7 min2:55 and 3:12: the full-course black, and a second hold. We used the first for a driver swap and the second for standing around, which the crew executed flawlessly.
05What the car was thinking
Pit-wall log, read over a radio that worked.
Oil pressure, on track
64–77 psi
At speed. The duct tape’s working pressure.
Oil temperature
157–206°F
Near 200 all Sunday afternoon.
Coolant
170–202°F
206 once, in the pit lane, no airflow.
Transmission
204°F peak
Epoxied case, dry. Two races, one syringe.
Charging
13.8–14.0 V
Three readings at 12.8–12.9. The alternator has been informed.
Fronts, hot
40–43 psi
Target 36–38. Left front left at 43, on purpose.
The oil system had a quiet Sunday: 64 to 77 psi at speed, and the two low readings, 42 and 40, were in the pit lane at idle, where forty is allowed.
The engine ran 329 laps with the oil near 200 all Sunday afternoon and never came up in conversation. The transmission case we filled with epoxy in September saw 204 and stayed dry. Brake fade was reported at 1:15 Sunday on pads that went on with great enthusiasm at eight that morning, which is what unbedded pads do when their bedding laps are also a race.
The tires are the decision. The card said 36 to 38 hot and bleed over 40. The log says 43 on the left front Sunday against 40 on the right. The wall looked at the 43, looked at the running order, and left it alone, on purpose: a bleed is a stop, a stop is laps, and laps were the whole plan. The left front ran the rest of the day three psi proud and the car ran it ninth in class, which is the right order of priorities.
06What we’re fixing before Houston
Texas Tippin’, MSR Houston, November 7–8.
- A real Accusump line, and a spare.Rated for the pressure, routed away from whatever the Carousel has in mind. The tape retires with honors.
- Front pressures, with a footnote.Cold set drops from 33 to 30 so the fronts land in the band on their own. The card still says bleed above 40; the wall still gets to say no, as it did Sunday.
- Bed the pads on Friday.New pads at breakfast and brake fade after lunch is cause and effect. The bedding laps happen on the test day, per our own article...we know better.
- Keep the cold-start plan.Four warm-up laps on a 33-degree morning cost one slow stint and nothing else. It goes in the Houston binder, where it will be useless, and the 2027 Summit Point binder, where it won’t.
- New bands.Sunday’s middle fifty per cent says 1:46–1:51 for Driver C and 1:48–1:52 for Driver B. The October paperwork is retired with the tape.
07Credit where it’s due
Six crew, one off-duty driver, three sponsors, one corner of Virginia.
None of this happens without the people who weren’t in the car. Six crew and the off-duty driver ran every stop, chased every leak, kept the log, and found the tape: two hours and forty-one minutes of Saturday were theirs to fix, twenty-seven places of Sunday theirs to protect, and they did both.
And none of it happens without sponsors who back a 2007 Accord on purpose. Bad Ass Pickles, Haas Auto Service Center, and Heavy Truck Painting are small businesses in Northern Virginia, which makes them exactly like us, except solvent. Haas, family-owned in Manassas since 1998, built the engine that ran 329 laps without a word. Heavy Truck Painting, in Remington, paints things far larger than our car and still takes our calls. Bad Ass Pickles is a name the radio check struggles with and the paddock does not. Buy something from them and say the #86 sent you.
Ninth in class, by the numbers. All the Way.
Sources. Transponder lap data; BFR pit-wall log; Weather Underground daily history for KMRB, Martinsburg; 24 Hours of Lemons official results. Stop times are the stop lap minus a 1:50 nominal lap.
