You might recall that the Bernal Dads Racing Team recently took The Whale, their craptastic Volvo station wagon race car, up to Sears Point in Sonoma for a weekend of motorsports with 24 Hours of LeMons — the endurance racing series for $500 cars. So how did the Bernal Dads do out on the track?

As the Facebook kids say… It’s complicated.

The trip from Bernal Heights to Sonoma got off to a loovley start, as The Whale was extracted from its Top Secret Base in the neighborhood and loaded for transport:

At the track, Judge Phil from the LeMons Ministry of Justice took a few moments to marvel that a) The Whale still runs even after 13 races, and b) The Whale really does reside in Bernal Heights between races:

When the green flag dropped and the racing began, and the Dads quickly ran into trouble: The Whale’s felt sluggish. A bit lethargic. Like it needed a Red Bull. A check under the hood revealed the problem: A spark plug wire had some loose, so The Whale was only running on three of four cylinders. Oops. A quick re-tightening, and the car regained its normal vigor.

Then the transmission started acting funny. Funny, as in, no third gear. Sometimes. Or fourth gear. Sometimes. It kept running, so the Dads kept racing, yet as the first day wore on it became clear that a replacement transmission was needed. Some pleading notes were posted to various online forums for Volvo geeks, and a replacement transmission was soon found resting comfortably in the front yard of a home in San Rafael. So while The Whale continued limping around the track, a detachment of Bernal Dads headed to Marin to purchase the Volvo transmission lawn ornament for $150.

That night, they borrowed the keys to a friend’s trackside garage, and set to work replacing the old crappy tranmission with the new crappy transmission:

After a robust dinner break, the swap was completed by midnight, and the next morning The Whale was again ready to race. Racer Brandon took the first shift, but he quickly returned to the paddock complaining about a slipping clutch cable.

That was fixed, so he went back out, and then came back in, because the cable was slipping again. Then it was fixed — for real this time — but soon Racer Brandon was back in the paddock yet again after a rather impressive fender-bender. I mean that very literally:

Luckily, Racer Brandon is also a graduate of the Bernal Dads School of Auto Body Repair, so he knew exactly what to do:

Voila! Good enough!

After that, it was mostly clear sailing. Saturday’s mechanical gremlins kept the Bernal Dads far from the top of the race standings, but for the rest of the day on Sunday The Whale was in fine form.

To get a sense of what that means, this ride-along video captures one lap around Sears Point with Racer Fiid, as The Whale goes head-to-head against a hot-pink BMW with a rear spoiler made from a snowboard, and a black Ford with a big, sparkly tail. Go fullscreen, and step on the gas:

Wheeeeeeeeeee!

And a good time was had by all:

PHOTOS: Telstar Logistics