How did the idea ever come about?
Jay - You want the long answer or the short answer?
I was sitting around with a bunch of my buddies at this every Saturday Chinese car guy lunch and it just struck me that it was a funny pun on 24 hours of LeMans and it would be really hillarious to drive 500$ cars on 24 hour endurance race. So you know, it was a whole series that began out of a bad pun.
Do people cheat?
Jay - Uh yeah, people cheat like lying bastards. Not all people, and what’s really interesting and this continues to hold true, although I think as people get more sophisticated it will ceise to be true, the more they cheat, does not actually help people, there is no correlation between cheating and winning in this race.
[Bunch of racers come up and somehow discussion of the leaf blower motor in the 300zx, which is actually connected to the throttle]
Now you said there is really no correlation between cheating and winning?
Jay - There is really not, we really haven’t seen it. I mean the guys who build super cheater cars, and I think we catch most of them and obviously we don’t know who we don’t catch. but I think we catch most of them, they don’t wind up going any faster or turning any more laps than anybody else, usually the guy who build the super cheater stuff screwes them, and they are working fixing the super cheater stuff all weekend long
Whos idea was it behind peoples curse?
Jay - Thats my friends Eric Zausner. He was one of the guys at lunch that day. He’s come up with a lot of the penalties and a lot of the funny stuff is Erics. He is one of the forefathers, and he thought it was a good idea if right up toward the end, you pulled two cars off the track and you let people vote on which one to get crushed and that morphed into - you give everybody a ballot and that way not only you get the fun of crushing a car but you also get a little bit of a deterrent effect because it will keep people honest.
(morphing happened before the series)
In your opinion what is the excitement behind Lemons VS traditional racing.
Jay - I think that it does not take itself seriously, I think it’s as simple as that. I think racing is supposed to be fun and I think a lot of racing in this world is not that much fun anymore, because it takes itself so damn seriously. I think at the end of the day nobody Has to go racing, so if it’s something you’re choosing to do that you don’t have to do it, it outa be fun, it shouldn’t have to be a pain in the ass.
What are your most memorable moments?
Jay - Aw Jeeze, I dont even know where to begin
Top three.
Jay - The time that the E30 team hooked their exhaust pipe so it pointed directly at their gastank, that was pretty exciting I’m never going to forget that.
- The time that we gave the peoples purse to an impala SS or knockoff of the impala ss and because after the crusher was done we wound up removing about 500 pounds of body work that actually set fastest lap after that, the car wound up being so light
- My friend ED Adams, who found a '64 Mercedes in the field that was covered in two inches of moss and liken, and it started it up on Tuesday, put brakes in it on Wednesday, track testing on Friday and finished the race on Saturday and Sunday, that was pretty good too.
What is your favorite aspect of lemons?
Jay - Ah just that people are seem to have a good time, they are not really aggro like a lot of other racing series you see, nobody is that worked up about it.
And for the end What do you drive?
Jay - HA! Well I could tell you the truth which is, I have dogs so whenever I wound up going anywhere with my dogs I have a current Volvo station wagon, but what I really drive is I have a '71 Alpha GTV Vintage race car with license plates on it. Street legal, and when I’m not taking my dogs any place that’s what I drive.