Hello and welcome to the official website of Audi Style Racing!
The next race for team Audi Style Racing will be at Chuckwalla Valley Raceway on December 8-9 for the 24 Hours of LeMons “Arse-Freeze-Apalooza.” The team is particularly excited for this race because it is the closest racetrack to the team’s home base in Scottsdale, Arizona – a mere 3-4 hour drive! Our previous races have been much longer distances ranging from a 10-20 hour haul EACH WAY to the track. These long distances are both expensive and exhausting, so the team is looking forward to having a “home track” advantage here. Most of the team members have also driven on Chuckwalla at least once, so a little familiarity should help too.
Team Audi Style Racing was featured in the article “The Team Costumes of the 2011 24 Hours of LeMons Season” on the Car & Driver blog, a distinguished publication in which we’re honored (and maybe even a bit shocked!) to be part of. Strangely enough this article was written several months ago, but it took the keen eyes of Audi Style Racing about 10 months to uncover – better late than never, right?
Our car was featured for our first race at Infineon, and the debut of our “crazy German engineers” theme. It was a great costume idea as it was easy to pull off and wear throughout the weekend, and relatively low cost. For those of you not familiar with the rules of the 24 Hours of LeMons, teams are expected to have themes and dress up in costumers for judging (and preferably stay in costume all weekend long).
As always, it’s an honor to participate in this sport and we owe a huge thank you to our sponsors as always; Audizine, GoodSpeed Performance Lab, Wheel Specialists, TCE Performance Products, Adam’s Rotors, Speed of Sound, and the Audi Club of AZ. Also a special thanks to Aviva Car Insurance for helping keep our towing rig insured. We look forward to the next race, and are scrambling to hopefully make the race in Chuckwalla at the end of the year – stay tuned!
That’s right, team Audi Style Racing is going to try another full 24 hour endurance race, commencing at 10am on June 30th and finishing at 10am on July 1st! The race will be at Buttonwillow Raceway, which is the home of our first LeMons race and a track we really enjoyed. It also happens to be the second closest track to us in the 24 Hours of LeMons series at a mere 8-10 hour drive, which will be nice! We’ll try to get plenty of pictures and do in-car video footage, although it may be a little more challenging during night hours due to the lighting.
(Cue Jason Statham)
“It always rains in Sonoma”
This is our teams fifth race together, with the same much loved and equally maligned 1982 Audi Coupe GT. Although GT originally as in Grand Touring, it now really means “Ghetto Turbocharged”. It’s a 2100lb, 200HP/250TQ I5 5speed short geared beast of a car. Front Wheel Drive only (Sad face). However with custom cut springs up front, and chopped springs in back (to the tune of roughly 700lbs/in) we’ve mitigated much of the understeer expected from a car like this. Summarily, having blown up 2 motors, 1 transmission, 2 uprights, 2 clutches, ball joints, wheel bearings and hubs and one rare master cylinder and one very rare f%@-ing shift bushing, we’ve been busy replacing parts as the “lemons court” allows within their rule set (this count excludes bloodied knuckles). For this race, we went in knowing what could go wrong, and were the most prepared we had ever been. Read more…
The team celebrating our best finish ever!
Audi Style Racing placed fifth in class and 34th overall at our third attempt to conquer Infineon Raceway/Sears Point in our 1982 Audi Coupe. The third time is in fact the charm!
After three engine swaps, two transmissions, and a boatload of miscellaneous repairs, the team was hoping for a race that didn’t involve major mechanical repair…and to that extent, we finally experienced that feat. We learned that consistency & reliability of the car is such a huge part of your finish in endurance racing, yet those factors are also what makes LeMons racing so interesting in that none of the cars racing are going to be very consistent or reliable given their age & shoe-string budgets.
Team Audi Style Racing is hoping that “the third time’s the charm” in our latest attempt to race at Infineon Raceway in the 24 Hours of LeMons series on March 24-25 (event details here). Our previous finishes of 91st and 93rd (mind you out of ~175 cars, so not as bad as it sounds) were a lot of fun, but we’re hoping that with some improvements in driving ability(10% less crappy than before!) as well as a better understanding of the weak points of our car (more or less the engine, transmission, suspension, exhaust, ignition, timing and electrical system, we think we have a shot to break into the high-80s this time around!
We had another great time at Infineon Raceway (aka Sears Point). Since our last race there – a lot has changed. A new engine (or two), a new livery, and a renewed sense of enthusiasm – and it showed. While the car died in the final few hours, we went from being the team that was known as “the team that were misfiring so bad they could barely make it up the hill” to “the team that didn’t totally suck.” But more importantly than anything, we keep having more fun than ever, and in the words of Team Petty Cash – “we really love to play race car.” If the most fun wins, then we’re definitely in the running for the lead…
Technically speaking (e.g. not sorting by “the most fun wins”), we were 36th in our class, or 93rd overall. At our best, we were 17th in our class and 51st overall, which is something we’re all pretty proud of. We also had the 4th fastest lap time in our class – so we know we can be very competitive, and we’re continuing to make strides in the right direction. Now we just need to work on consistency, and continue to reduce our pit stops & repair needs.
Our Team Picture from Infineon Last Year
This is your official invite to watch us race LIVE at Infineon Raceway this weekend, Oct 22-23, in the 24 hours of LeMons.
We have just about 10 days until we’re at Infineon Raceway for our next 24 Hours of LeMons race, so I wanted to write a quick post and update everyone where we’re at.
Our coupe now runs under its own power once again!
We got our junk yard engine to replace the last engine we blew up in Reno just a short time ago, and it’s already installed and running again. I guess the third time was the charm in learning how to install engines in our car!
We also hit another milestone – we’ve owned the car for one year.
In the car’s rookie year, we’ve put down some crazy stats:
Racing is something that most people will never understand. It’s not just a sport or something to do on Saturday night. It’s a way of life. Once your in it, it’s in your blood. Once you make your first lap you can’t stop. The track is home away from home. You smell that race fuel, rubber, and when you hear those engines scream it’s music to your ears. Repost this if racing is your way of life.
Our Previous Engine – Catastrophic Failure
As you may have read from our last race, Goin for Broken 2011 at Reno-Fernley Raceway, we had some engine problems that took us out of the race after just 45 minutes of racing. At first we thought it was just a blown head gasket, we later discovered a cracked head.
Our team sponsor Audizine joined us for at Infineon Raceway a few months ago to witness the insanity that is the 24 hours of LeMons firsthand. We were joined by Anthony, the owner of Audizine, and Sean Rivers, a master of video production. The guys from Audizine had such a good time, they decided to run a feature on us – which came out excellent if we don’t say so ourselves.
Read more…
