About a year ago, a quick-witted race photographer snapped a great photograph of a 24 Hours of LeMons Alfa Romeo Spider bouncing a connecting rod off the pavement. (See the amazing image here.) That photographic feat was pretty cool, and we felt sure that nobody would ever match it . . . until we saw what one team’s GoPro caught at last weekend’s There Goes the Neighborhood race in New York!
The Peugeot 405 was the final car Peugeot sold in the United States before packing up and heading home, and the Mi16 version was a factory hot rod that came with a mighty 150-horse engine. The Punisher GP LeMons team picked up an Mi16 a couple years back, and then they kept finding more and more of the things, always priced well below scrap value. These days, Punisher GP races a pair of identical cars in Eastern Region LeMons races, and they always make an impressive entrance to the inspection with their Peugeot-towing-Peugeot setup.
The problem is that these Pugs’ high-strung engines have a tendency to, well, explode under race conditions. I can’t recall exactly how many engines this team has scattered all over LeMons tracks over the years (the above photo of a 405 Mi16 nuking yet another motor was shot at the New England 2011 race), but let’s just say that it’s not an uncommon occurrence for Punisher GP and leave it at that.
Your LeMons correspondent has become somewhat of a thrown-rod connoisseur during his years following this series (so much so that he has created a collection of thrown-rod desktop wallpaper files for the enjoyment of LeMons fans), and some LeMons races feature as many as 10 engines blasting rods, crankshaft segments, and other once-internal components through blocks and oil pans. It takes a truly spectacular engine disintegration to stand out from this background of mechanical carnage, and what happened to the #405 Punisher GP Peugeot’s powerplant certainly qualifies.
Both of the team’s cars were running very well on Sunday afternoon at Monticello Motor Club, so well that the #917 car had managed to grab the Class C lead. The #405 car wasn’t far behind, but then disaster struck (again).
The Bruce Springsteen–themed “The Boss” Toyota Celica was close behind the #405 Punisher GP car when choking clouds of smoke began pouring from the Peugeot. Hey, that happens all the time. But what’s that object emerging from the smoke?
Boom! What appears to be a connecting-rod cap smashed right into the Celica’s windshield. This is why 24 Hours of
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