Our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Leftover-Parts-Racing/220525224678847 2012 Racing Schedule May 2012 As we are focused on prepping our cars for the upcoming Buttonwillow race, Eric Rood of the The Rusty Hub, a crapcan racing blog, interviewed our Co-Captain to get some background on the team. You might get a chuckle out of the article, it's posted here: http://www.therustyhub.com/2012/05/q-with-michael-chiapetta-from-leftover.html December 2011 - New Car for 2012! Picked up this old racecar in Roswell, NM on Christmas Eve: a 1972 Mazda RX2. Needs a little work, but it will be on the track sometime this year. Maybe a vintage race...
 CHUMPCAR CHAMPIONSHIP, Newton Iowa, Labor Day, 2011 Based upon our team's successful races at Mexicali and Willow Springs, we received an invitation to the Chumpcar National Championship, in Newton, Iowa. The race promised to be "one for the record books", as it comprised a total of 25 1/2 hours of continuous racing, alternating between road course and oval racing. How did we do? Well, we brought a Pig to Iowa, and it got slaughtered - what could we expect? The oval-track racing was new to everyone on the team, and one driver had an interesting spin coming out of an oval turn (not to mention a few other off-course / gravel-trap / tire barrier incidents) but the car was not badly damaged by any of it. Transmission tailshaft problems began early - we destroyed one tailshaft during the Friday practice. No problem - or so we thought - we just installed our spare transmission. Ultimately, the second ("our spare") transmission tailshaft failure meant we were only able to run Saturday, and spent Sunday morning searching Craigslist, RX7Club, eBay and the local junkyards for a replacement, to no avail. Ultimately, we had no experience on oval tracks,and it showed. The car was geared too low for the continuous high-speed ovals, necessitating RPMs to be held at high levels, leading to vibration-caused transmission/driveshaft failures.  THE STREETS OF MEXICALI Taking the green flag at the start of the Chumpcar Streets of Mexicali: 14-15 May 2011 . The cars are doing approximately 80- 100 mph at this point along the "front straight", and, as you can see, only a small curb separates you from trees, signposts, spectators, wayward bicyclists, and whatever or whoever else happens to wander down the sidewalk!  Racing in Chumpcar"Streets of Mexicali" was a blast - lots of good racing and great camaraderie with teams who made the trip to south of the border. Street racing has its own special set of challenges - there is no "runoff" if you make a mistake, which took a toll on most competitors, us included. 24 Hours of LeMons "Sears Pointless" at Infineon, 26-27 March 2011  Here's our inspiration - the original Porsche 917/20 "Pink Pig" at the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen  Copied from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_917 Chumpcar 12 hours at Willow Springs - 13 Nov 2010 Somehow, we got lucky, and won this race. I still don't see how ;) Chumpcar July 10-11 2010 at AutoClub Speedway - Fontana Two races, actually: 7 hour race on Saturday, and another 7-hour race on Sunday. We learned a lot about what we needed to do to compete. Almost got on the podium, too. 24 Hours of LeMons Arse-Freeze-Apalooza at Thunderhill November 2009 And, here's the car at our first Crapcan race 24 Hours of LeMons at Thunderhill Nov 2009 This pic "borrowed", with all due respects, from the official 24 Hours of LeMons photo gallery. We were too busy asking the officials to "black-flag" our flaming car into the pits to think about taking a photo.
One of the reasons I purchased a car with straight body is that I needed good body parts to swap onto a different race car. So, the first thing done to the car was to remove the good hood, doors, bumpers and front fenders. This is a picture with all the dinged-up leftover body parts transplanted onto the car, prior to its original racing (checkerboard / Italian restaurant tablecloth) paint scheme:  | ||||||||||
