How to Convince Your Friends It is a Good Idea to Run in the 24 Hours of Lemons
How do you convince your friends to join you in the most miserable, and awesome experience possible? In a word – beer.
In my experience, the best way to get a group of people to volunteer enormous amounts of time, effort and money is to get them drunk. Not tipsy or buzzed – I mean shitfaced. Discussion of our first attempt at Lemons began after a few beers at the monthly car club. It would be weeks until we had full commitment from enough people to really give it a go. But don’t be surprised if the conversation starts like this.
“Have you seen that Lemons thing? That’s nuts.”
“Yeah, that looks like so much fun, but it’s probably a lot of work.”
“No way. I bet we could build a car in 4 weeks. We should do this.”
“OK, even if we could do it, where can we build a silly looking race car?”
“Ah man, we can do it at my place. I have room – and my wife won’t mind.”
TIP #1: If one of your friends is willing to suggest this – agree immediately and buy a round of drinks before they can change their mind. They won’t remember why they volunteered their garage/home/driveway the next day. The hardest part has been started – you’ve got a team coming together, and a place to start working. The hours will be long, and as you get closer to the race date – tempers will get short. Get your local Pizza delivery on speed dial – you’ll need it.
Plan ahead. Fortunately, one of our team members was very good at Ebay. That sped up the process of selling some stuff from the car to make cash for things like roll bar steel, harnesses and window nets.
OK, you’ve got the core members of your team. If you’re doing a Lemon’s event – they allow up to 6 drivers per team. Recruit 8 people. Hell, 10 people if you can. Things change. People get sick, have babies, move, get laid off – it’s going to take you months to prepare for this unfortunate event – the unexpected will happen.
Do not underestimate the need of a good support crew. Here we are at a race that started at midnight. We didn’t get much sleep the night before the race either. Words can’t describe how comforting it is when you’re cold, dead-tired, facing another 18 hours of bliss/frustration and someone brings a big pot of Chili! Thanks to Titanium Motorsports for the Pic.
Next – create a budget and a plan. (yes – you will underestimate the final cost at this stage, but do it anyway) What is the buy-in per person? Do they have a partial ownership of the car, or are they buying in for a race – or – do they get special options for being a founding member of the team. (Ex. Right of first refusal to the next XXX events, assuming the car lives through the first race.) Don’t be surprised if you get a lot of interest after it looks like “this is actually going to happen.” What are the responsibilities of each team member? Some people have more cash than enthusiasm to help – others can spend more effort than money. Make a deal that is fair – and well communicated to all. You’ll need the flexibility.
Next entry we’ll discuss how to sell this plan to your family (no, do not even think about hiding this from them – they’ll think your on some sort of drug usage binge)
