Punisher Bass
He who drives a Buick
Interesting- the Pacific Northworst GP got moved closer to Seattle this year. The first edition was in north central Oregon last summer and although the participants loved the challenging track (from what I read), it's location in the middle of nowhere probably contributed to the low turnout. Glad to see they're trying it again.
Judging from the few tracks I've seen, building them in east bumblefuck is the rule and not the exception. Hell, Nelson Ledges in Ohio is actually located in the middle of Amish country, you can't get much further from modern civilization than that. Summit Point felt like you were driving to film a sequel to Deliverance or the Wrong Turn series.
It seemed to me there are two groups that are currently involved in Lemons- the people who want to actually race "inexpensively" and those who want to go nuts with themes. Either approach is ok in my mind, but I do wonder about combining both on the same racetrack at the same time. So which one is Lemons going to want to attract going forward? The prize money change seems to indicate they're now aiming more at the "race on the relatively cheap" crowd which I thought was the market Chump Car was going for.
While LeMons is still "cheap" to race in, the cost to build a car for it has increased several times over since the series started in 2006. These days you're going to spend around $4,000-$5,000 +/- just to get the car to pass tech, that's a considerable amount when these are supposed to be $500 cars.
In my opinion, Chump Car is just a copycat series with a few advantages and disadvantages over LeMons. For example, a few months ago there was a big controversy where the race leader was bumped on the track and had to spend several hours in the pits making repairs, the problem was that the race organizers ruled that the bump was intentional and decided to credit that team with the laps they WOULD have been turning had they not been forced to stay in the pits. This obviously allowed them to maintain their current position despite not actually earning it. It also came to light that the team had members who were friends/family of the race organizers as well, a clear case of nepotism. Eventually the team opted to "give the laps back" and Chump tried to sweep the whole thing under the carpet.