Randy Pobst: LeMons MGB-GT "Handles Well, Bad Brakes, Low On Power"
Randy Pobst came to the Where The Elite Meet To Cheat 24 Hours of LeMons to drive Speedycop’s MR2-chassis’d Lancia Scorpion, but we couldn’t resist seeing what would happen if we put him behind the wheel of the Goldbrickers MGB-GT. In the rain. The result was startling.
Pobst immediately knocked 13 seconds off the team’s previous best lap, which was set in the dry (this is on a track layout on which most LeMons cars are running laps in the 1:25 region), and started eating up the E30s and RX-7s. What lesson should LeMons teams take away from this? Improving the driver helps a lot more than improving the car. Unfortunately for the MG team, the brake lights crapped out soon after Randy’s stint, and the car spent the next hour with the team battling Joe Lucas, Prince of Darkness.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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This was our 7th LeMons race- and second race with the 1975 LTD Landau. When we started racing LeMOns back in 2008, we had almost no racing experience- a couple of autocrosses, and some spirited on-road driving. I turned fast lap time in the LTD this race- a car that weighs 4200 lbs, has a miserable, low compression smog 400M, highway gears, and $30 620 treadwear Michelins. I think my best time was about a 1:25.9 lap. The top cars were turning about 1:13 fast laps, so even with all of our experience, you still need a reasonably competitive car to win on laps. There are _other_ prizes, though...
Not only can the man drive, he can play a bitchin game of Simon Says too: http://youtu.be/1Xmfv5kpGkQ