From Bucket List to BFE: Spectating 24 Hours of Lemons at High Plains Raceway
Let’s get one thing straight: it’s not the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It’s the 24 Hours of Lemons—and it might just be the best, punniest name in any competitive sport. Where Le Mans is about prestige and precision, Lemons is about duct tape, dad jokes, and $500 beaters with dreams of glory.
I first heard about the 24 Hours of Lemons back in 2007, thanks to a Road & Track article by Calvin Kim. The event had just launched the year before at the now-defunct Altamont Raceway in California. Jay Lamm, an automotive journalist and the mastermind behind it, wanted to bring racing back to the people—no trust funds or carbon-fiber supercars required. His idea? A race where your car budget is capped at $500 (excluding safety gear, such as a roll cage, tires, brakes, fire suit and a helmet). In other words, you’re racing a lemon. And thus, the name was born.
After reading the article, the event promptly went onto my bucket list. Though I never got around to fielding a car myself, I did tell my buddy Manuel about it. Years later, after falling deep into the Miata-Is-Always-The-Answer rabbit hole, he joined a team of fellow zoom zoom enthusiasts and finally made it to the grid.
Fast forward 19 years from that first race, and Lemons now runs events at over a dozen tracks across the U.S., including High Plains Raceway in Colorado about an hour east of Denver. Manuel just so happened to race during my last weekend in Colorado before returning to Spain, and I went out to watch.
This specific 24 Hours of Lemons event was cheekily dubbed “The B.F.E. GP”, a nod to the track’s remote location in Deer Trail, Colorado. “B.F.E.” stands for “Bum [Expletive] Egypt.” It’s Lemons’ way of saying, “Welcome to the middle of nowhere. Now let’s race.”
Despite the name, Lemons races are often not 24 hours straight. At least this one wasn’t (but Manuel assures me there will be a true 24-hour race in September). The B.F.E. GP featured two sessions: 8.5 hours on Saturday and another on Sunday. Between sessions, there are more than 12 hours to eat, sleep, and do emergency repairs. The team with the most laps across both wins. Simple. Chaotic. Glorious.
I arrived Friday afternoon—after spending the first half of the day in the Denver area getting a DEXA scan and visiting the Rodz & Bodz Movie Car Museum—in time to wander the paddock and soak in the madness. With a $40 spectator pass, I actually had full access from Thursday to Sunday.
Despite it being entirely permissible to simply pitch a tent at High Plains Raceway due to its remoteness, I opted to stay at the Longhorn Motel in Byers 15 miles away—basic but blissfully air-conditioned—and enjoyed a savory solo Mexican dinner at Los 3 Garcías next door. That night, I watched the Pacers blow a lead to the Thunder in Game 4 of the NBA Finals. In my mind, that’s when they lost the championship despite the series going to seven games.
Saturday’s race started at 10:00 AM. I missed the green flag by minutes due to running a couple of Strava segments in Bennett, a town 10 miles away from Byers in the opposite direction of High Plains Raceway, as part of my training regimen. But I caught a few laps of Manuel’s team in their black first-gen Miata—complete with an orange construction sign for a roof—before it vanished from the track.
“Uh-oh,” I thought after realizing that the car was no longer duking it out with the other jalopies. “Something must have broken.”
Sure enough, back in the paddock, I found the car up on jackstands. Some flywheel bolts had exploded after just eight laps. Manuel had been driving when that happened, but he said in no uncertain terms that the car did not break because of how he was driving.
In true Lemons fashion, the team dropped the transmission out from the bottom of the car in impressive time (less than an hour) and waited for a replacement flywheel being driven in from Windsor by a teammate’s wife. I wasn’t optimistic the car would be back on the track that day, so I spent the next few hours filming other cars and eventually hit the road to drive the two hours back to Fort Collins.
Turns out, I underestimated them. They not only got a new flywheel—they swapped in a whole new engine and transmission. They were back on track for the final hour of Saturday and ran most of Sunday. Not bad for a team that spent half the weekend wrenching.
Manuel even set the team’s fastest lap, and ultimately, the #22 Miata didn’t finish last despite the car being out of commission for most of Saturday’s race session. That honor went to his friend Mike, whose International Harvester pickup blew a piston ring in the paddock on Friday and never even made it to the start line.
As for me, I loved every minute. Friday evening might’ve been my favorite part—wandering the paddock, gawking at the cars up close, admiring the creativity, and even sitting in a vintage Formula 3000 ACR/Holden that someone brought for fun. It weighed just 1500 pounds and sat barely an inch off the ground. Wild.
I also saw that three of my previous cars‘ “cousins”—a red Porsche 944, a black “Chat GPT” BMW Z3, and a dark Chrysler PT Cruiser that is the featured photo of this post—participated in the race. Of course, I rooted for them as well. Ultimately, they all finished mid-pack in terms of laps.
Racing in Lemons was the dream, but spectating might be even better. It was 95°F (35°C), and I was grateful not to be wrenching under a car or sweating in a firesuit and helmet in that heat. The cars were ridiculous, the people were hilarious, and the whole thing was a beautiful mess.
If you ever get the chance to attend a 24 Hours of Lemons race, do it. Just don’t forget your sunscreen, sun hat, sense of humor, food, water… and maybe a spare flywheel.
Results
A Pontiac Solstice roadster—a car I most definitely have a soft spot for—won the B.F.E. GP by a single lap.
I do question if that car and its monster rear wing really did cost only $500, though. Aside from its unpainted front left fender, it did not look (or race) like a lemon.
There are 2 comments.
Well done article. I would have liked a photo of the Solstice though. I wonder who checks the $500 lemon accountability?
Thanks for the thoughtful comment, Douglas! Not including a photo of the Solstice was indeed an oversight—I didn’t see the car in the paddocks on Friday, so I couldn’t snap a picture at the time. That said, I was able to extract a decent shot from some video footage I took, and I’ve added it to the article now. Appreciate you pointing that out!
As for the $500 lemon accountability, I suspect some (maybe many) of the “lemons” might be bending the rules just a tad, but the judges do scrutinize builds and have clever ways of enforcing penalties (like “B.S. inspections” and time penalties). Keeps things interesting!