Bent Rods Racing
A low-budget endurance race car engineered from the ground up to run at its mechanical limits for 24 continuous hours — and the rookie team that raced it.
A–AThe Pitch
The 24 Hours of Lemons is exactly what it sounds like: take a car that costs almost nothing, engineer it into something that can survive a full day of wheel-to-wheel racing, and find out what breaks first — the car or the team. I founded Bent Rods Racing to find out.
[Placeholder — tell me the origin story: what car you started with, why Lemons, how the team came together.]
B–BThe Build
Working on a tight budget and a tighter clock, I engineered and fabricated the car end to end — applying an intuitive understanding of mechanical and systems engineering to the suspension, drivetrain, and safety systems. Every subsystem had to be cheap, serviceable in a pit stall at 3 a.m., and durable enough to run flat-out for 24 hours.
[Placeholder — specifics to add: donor platform, key modifications, roll cage, brake and cooling upgrades, biggest fabrication challenge.]
C–CRace Day
Our three-student team hit the grid at 24 Hours of Lemons having never raced before. Over the full event I coordinated pit stops, diagnostics, emergency repairs, communications, and endurance strategy — keeping the car on track and the team functioning through a full day of racing.
[Placeholder — race stories welcome: what broke, what got fixed trackside, best stint, closest call.]
D–DResults
Out of roughly 130 teams, we won one of just three awards — the Organizers' Choice — cited for our strategy, performance, sportsmanship, and "everything a rookie team should do in a fresh build."
E–EWhat's Next
[Placeholder — next race, planned upgrades, lessons carrying into the next build.]