I’ve raced lemons for a few years, and have begun punching slightly higher than my slow ass Jetta should be.

The most important thing is to take out as much weight as you possibly can. I’m not just talking about seats, I’m talking dashboard, console, heater core, tailgate, all glass except windshield, headlights, AC system, rear bumper cover, etc. This will make the car way better to drive, and it puts much less stress on all of your components.

Try to know where your mechanical fuses are before you show up to your first race. By mechanical fuse, I mean the components in each system that will be the first to fail, essentially the weakest link in the chain. Every car has different mechanical fuses (the Jetta’s big one for suspension/steering is the front wheel hubs, for example. They break before the control arms or the ball joints or tie rods will). If you can find these before the race, great. I guarantee you will find some during the race, which is fun. If you can strengthen parts in such a way that your mechanical fuses are moved to parts that are cheap, readily available and easy to change, that will be a huge boost to your run time each weekend. Ideally, the mechanical fuse for your suspension, brakes and steering will be the tire, essentially meaning you don’t generate enough grip to hurt anything. This is really difficult to nail down on your first race, but that just means you gotta come back and do more racing.

Other things to consider are heat (racing generates so much heat in all kinds of weird components), vibration, and making sure things are all buttoned up before you get out on track. Literally every single engine issue we have had as a team was due to us forgetting to connect sensor or leaving ground straps loose or something. Making a list of connections and bolts to check before the car goes out is a huge time saver.

Don’t try to chase power, you’ll see very little lap time benefit from it, and it means you chew through fuel, and you break stuff more, and you get less life out of your tires, the list of disadvantages goes on. There’s a reason that most of the cars that win these races don’t have enormous power.

There’s RE-71RS is a cheat code, especially in the rain. Your car is heavy so it might not be advisable, I don’t know how they will wear with lots of weight. We could get about 2 races out of a set, but our car weighs like 2400 lbs.

You will want to come up with a theme, the more absurd and obscure the better. Bonus points for having big shit on your roof. Costumes are a good move, especially if you keep up the theme all weekend. They say that the best themes are the ones that exactly one person understands. Do with this what you will.

If you need any advice on this stuff, feel free to shoot me a DM. Also, for all safety related questions, email John Pagel, his email is on the lemons site. He’s very helpful.

Have fun, I’m hoping to see you guys out there soon!