March Crapness: First Round, 6 vs. 11 (March 22)

EDITOR'S NOTE: WE'LL BE USING GOOGLE FOR THE POLLS FROM NOW ON. SOME OF YOU MAY NOTICE THAT YOU CAN VOTE MULTIPLE TIMES. DON'T DO THIS. WE GET A LOG OF ALL THE VOTES AND WILL NOT COUNT ANY VOTES WHERE YOU'VE STUFFED THE BALLOT BOXES, EVEN IF WE DO LIVE NEAR CHICAGO.

Still in the first round, we match the 6 vs. 11 seeds with some crazies and some super-competitive teams.

Go to the March Crapness tab for the full rundown, up-to-date bracket and schedule.

Read the introduction to March Crapness here.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for updates. Tweet about March Crapness using the hashtag #crapness.

[Extra-special help to Murilee Martin for assisting with many of the photos. All photos as credited.]




TRASHED TRANNY REGION:
Speedycop and His Gang of Outlaws (6) vs. Tetanus Racing (11)

Speedycop and His Gang of Outlaws - Lincoln Mark VIII, Cadillac Fleetwood, Ford Thunderbird, Lancia Scorpion, Ford Galaxie...Basically, all of the cars and then some

Jeff Bloch (aka Speedycop) rests in his natural position: Under a terrifically crappy car doing things that squares can't handle. With the help of a dedicated and very talented team, Bloch has managed numerous unspeakably strange accomplishments in the world of road racing. (Murilee Martin photo)

Watching Jeff Bloch (Speedycop), his ever-expanding crew and his fleet of bizarre machines is a unique experience. He's attained cult status in LeMons for his ad hoc repairs and last-minute prep, not to mention the surreal creations he's wielded on a race track. Lost in the madness is the fact that he's also a pretty quick driver when not handicapped by a direct-drive Thunderbird or a pop-up-camper-bodied Suzuki X-90. Most recently, Speedy debuted a unique Toyota hybrid. No electric drive, though; Bloch draped an otherwise-slated-to-become-beer-cans Cessna 310 shell over a Toyota van chassis, dubbed it the Spirit of LeMons and glided it to the team's fifth Index of Effluency trophy.

Resume: LeMons - 5 Indexes of Effluency, 1 Class C Win, 3 Top Tens

Tetanus Racing - Dodge Neon, Porsche 944

Chris Champion and Mary Harris--Tetanus Racing's perpetrators--have driven in something like 40 races between them, including several successful ventures with the Tetanus cars and numerous arrive-and-drives all over the country. They even renewed their vows at the 2012 race at Road America. (Murilee Martin photo)

Tetanus Racing's original Dodge Neon is in fairly close competition with the Keystone Kops' Volvo, the Schumacher Taxi Service CoROLLa and a handful of California cars for most-campaigned. They've yet to podium, but the husband-wife team of Chris Champion and Mary Harris hold the team's till with a steady hand. And they're highly entertaining people to boot. They've suffered through the predictable maladies of the Porsche 944 and eventually given up on the stock motor, which only had some snake eggs in it when they took ownership of it.

Resume: LeMons - 4 Top Tens

WRECKED ROD REGION: 
Team Bear Patrol (6) vs. Pit Crew Revenge/Rolling Chicane Limo Service (11)

Team Bear Patrol -Lexus SC400

Team Bear Patrol's Lexus SC400 poses for an opportunistic photo at Iowa Speedway, displaying its battle-scarred hide and a terrific theme based on of the countless points of plot-twisting minutiae from a Simpsons episode. (Greg Brawley photo)

For us at The Rusty Hub, one of our favorite aspects of crapcan racing is luxury marquees with little-to-no track pedigree dicing on the track with sports cars. Team Bear Patrol's Lexus SC400 is one such crapheap, a battered and ugly V8-powered, slushboxed personal luxury coupe. In addition to a great theme, Bear Patrol have managed to throw their SC400 at the Bimmer-heavy ChumpCar Central region with solid results and minimal collateral damage. This could very well become the first Lexus with an overall win in 2013.

Resume: ChumpCar - 4 Top Tens



Pit Crew Revenge/Rolling Chicane Limo Service - Honda CRX, Honda Civic, Lincoln Towncar Limo

The aptly named Rolling Chicane Limo Service Lincoln Town Car remains one of the more insane sights from a LeMons race. We only wish this car had been running at claustrophobic Altamont Raceway during the insanely crowded early days of LeMons. (Murilee Martin photo)

Chris Overzet has the biggest LeMon in history by a couple of measures. His ugly-as-hell LeMons Demolition Honda CRX ran at the series' inaugural event and was still clocking crapcan laps more than five years later alongside a bevy of other Hondas under the Pit Crew Revenge moniker. He upped the ante by adding a Lincoln Town Car Limousine to his crapcan stable, the aptly named Rolling Chicane Limo Service. The car has been subject to the fame of being the most awkward-looking crapcan tow of all time and having its brakes set alight by Motor Trend writer Jonny Lieberman. For good measure, his arm also bears a 24 Hours of LeMons tattoo.

Resume: Persistence, mostly in the form of 30+ LeMons entries.




SHEARED SHAFT REGION:
Nutjob Racing (6) vs. NSF Racing (11)

Nutjob Racing - Honda Civic Wagovan

For a few years, we wondered if anyone would build a replica of the Bluth family staircar. Just when we'd abandoned hope and begun laying the groundwork to build our own, Nutjob Racing showed up at Autobahn Country Club in an impossible-to-top racing staircar after driving it as-is all the way from Brooklyn. (The Rusty Hub photo)

Race trailers are for sissies. Real endurance racers drive their Honda Civic Wagovan--which they worked on, welds and all, on the street in Brooklyn--several hundred miles to a race, flog it for 14 hard hours on the track and drive it back home to the street. Oh, and real endurance racers do all of that with a 12-foot Empire State Building on the roof. Or with a staircar. Staircar! STAIRCAR!!!

Resume: LeMons - 1 Top Ten, some hop-ons

NSF Racing - Plymouth Fury, Plymouth Barracuda, Mercedes 170, Mercedes 6.9, Dodge Aries, Honda CRX, Chrysler Saratoga...Basically, all the other cars

NSF Racing loves the old Mopar and their decrepit Plymouth Fury limped its way to an Index of Effluency and occasionally to the LeMons Penalty Box, mostly for the car itself just being dangerous. (Murilee Martin photo)

NSF--like videos of insane drunk women yelling about Internet ineptitude--remind us that, like YouTube, LeMons has a weird section that people periodically stumble into. NSF started out innocently with some econoboxes before diving headfirst into that aforementioned weird part. Characteristics of NSF entries may include (but are not limited to): decrepit, obscure, dangerous, awesome and on fire. Maybe the most impressive initiative on their very long resume is passing on their Dodge Aries K-Car wagon in a sort of Sisterhood of the Traveling Fails manner...not that we've read that book or cried at seen the movie or anything.

Resume: LeMons - 2 Class Wins, 2 Indexes of Effluency




CRACKED CRANK REGION:
SHOtime/Red Rocket Ratnest Revival (6) vs. Latch-Key Kids (11)

SHOtime/RRRR - Ford Taurus SHO

Each of the Ford Taurus SHOs pictured was pretty much an even-money bet to finish at the top or to blow up after 15 laps. Still, the SHOtime crew ran away with the 2011 LeMons National Championship. (Murilee Martin photo)

Led by Sergio Perfetti's Red Rocket Ratnest Revival Ford Taurus SHO, the Texas SHO Mafia absolutely owned the 2011 LeMons season in the Gulf not only by running up to six SHOs in a single race but also by putting several of the high-revving Fords at or near the top of the standings. This is no small feat with the SHO, which is renowned for being fast-but-fragile. Through the life of these cars, the Mafia likely exhausted the supply of SHO transmissions in Texas.

Resume: LeMons - 3 Overall Wins, 16 Top Tens; 2011 LeMons National Champions

Latch-Key Kids - Plymouth Neon

The Latch-Key Kids were one of the superstars of crapcan racing's early days, having traveled from Detroit to Thunderhill (2007 - 2nd Place) and Houston (2008 - 4th Place) for LeMons races and only missing the Top 5 once in eight races.   (The Rusty Hub photo)

The Latch-Key Kids' possess one of the great stories of heartbreak in crapcan racing. Those seven Top 10 finishes listed below in LeMons aren't just Top 10s; they were all Top 5 results, including twice finishing runners-up. After their second second-place finish, they took home a well-deserved I Got Screwed trophy. In 2011, the Latch-Key Kids also suffered the indignation of trading paint with the author's wretched heap at Autobahn, which remains the only LeMons race where the Chia Neon didn't finish in the Top 10. Is it the author's fault? We're not in the business of commentary, but the answer is yes. Sorry, Latch-Key Kids.

Resume: ChumpCar - 2 Top Tens; LeMons - 7 Top Tens