Saturday morning started with tons and tons of rain which miraculously tapered off about 20 minutes before the race began. It actually stayed dry the whole 24 hours until literally 20 minutes after the race ended, when it started pouring again.

The first hour and a half we were pretty much leading the race, and our first and second drivers were really kicking ass. Halfway through the second driver's run the car started making funny noises, so he pulled into the pit. After a few minutes of poking and prodding, we discovered that the transmission was stuck in 2nd gear, with no way of getting it out. This reduced our top speed to about 50mph. We put it back out on the track and kept going, while our guys ripped the transmission out of the BMW E30 that one of the guys had driven there with the intention of putting it into Ze Brick. Our hope was that there would be a rain delay of some sort, as we didn't want to lose 1.5-2 hours worth of laps while we swapped it. We ended up not swapping it as the rain never returned as I mentioned before. Still, even at only 50mph we were still kicking ass in the more technical parts of the race, weaving through traffic in turns and such.

It was pretty depressing watching it in the open areas though, as you could tell our drivers really wanted to open it up but instead were forced to watch people blow by. The rest of the race was filled with lots of crazy Frankenstein-esque mechanical work, as we had blown vacuum hoses, a leaking water pump, oil burning/leaking, and a flat tire, not to mention fire and smoke coming up from a hole in the floor below the shifter. It was pretty cool seeing the car jacked up at 3 in the morning, sparks flying out from beneath it as our guys welded on whatever needed to be repaired.

Overall we ended up in 19th place out of 52 cars. Not bad for being stuck in 2nd gear for 22.5 hours of the race. Also, the fact that we even finished was an achievement, since more than half of the cars didn't even manage to last the entire time.

The rest of the race was pretty hilarious. Lots of crazy themes on the different cars, and lots of awesome stuff the staff did. We were set up right across from the staff HQ, and every time a driver did something bad we got to watch the aftermath. There was a dart board that the offending driver would have to throw a dart at, and then he'd have to suffer whichever punishment it landed on. I saw a guy get tarred (Karo syrup) and feathered in his full helmet and fire suit. I saw two different drivers get paddled by a pair of women in police hats. Arc Angel -- a woman with white clothes, angel wings, a halo, and an arc welder -- was welding farm animals and other funny stuff onto random places on offending cars. There were even a few that ended up getting big metal toilet paper dispensers welded on, complete with toilet paper that unraveled as they went around the track. People's Curse was won by Team First Blood, the guys who did a Rambo-themed truck. First they beat the crap out of their car with sledge hammers and axes, then they flipped it over, then they flipped it upright again, and then they tore the rest of it apart with the jaws of life. Or death in this case.

Overall the thing was pretty surreal. We're definitely planning to do it again next year, and we'll probably start working on the car as soon as we get an idea for a theme, some money together, and the time to do it. I'm sure it'll be something geeky and/or video game related.