Pumpkins and lemons take over New Hampshire Motor Speedway with two signature fall events set for a weekend of family fun and unique entertainment at the Extreme Chunkin Festival and the 24 Hours of Lemons Halloween Hooptiefest on Oct. 20 and 21.
It's a bird…it's a plane…it's a flying pumpkin?
Pumpkins will fill the sky as 23 teams battle it out at the Extreme Chunkin Festival looking to break a world record for shooting a pumpkin one mile. The fall festival at New Hampshire Motor Speedway features two days of pumpkin launching, car show, live music, kids archery, face painting, carnival rides and more.
The event, which pits backyard engineers in an all-out battle for pumpkin launching greatness, uses hand-built machines such as air cannons, trebuchets and catapults/torsions. The 23 teams, including eight youth teams, will travel from all across the country to vie for number one in distance and accuracy along with a new fan vote and the chance to break a world record.
American Chunker will return to the competition as current world record holder (4,694.68 feet) and 2017 Extreme Chunkin Festival top winner. Last year, this air cannon launched 4,381 feet, but this weekend, the team from Merrimack, N.H. has their eyes set on breaking a world record by reaching one mile.
The Yankee Siege medieval trebuchet from Greenfield, N.H., a six-time world champion that weighs 58,000 pounds, will return for exhibition launches sending a car, piano, snowmobile and two nearly 1,500-pound pumpkins, which were grown in Merrimack, N.H. by the New Hampshire Giant Pumpkin Growers Association, into the air.
On top of the competition and exhibition launching events, the Extreme Chunkin Festival will have a beer tent, car show, live music, face painting, kids archery, food vendors, merchandise and carnival rides ($5/ride). Tickets to the event are $10 in advance.
While pumpkins rule the S9 campground, lemons will take over the infield as the 24 Hours of Lemons Halloween Hooptiefest returns to the 1.6-mile road course. The 24 Hours of Lemons is the world's first endurance race series for cars that cost $500 or less. With 10,000 participants spread across dozens of races at tracks coast-to-coast, no other event creates bigger, weirder, more hilariously irrational challenges than this weekend-long blowout of bumper-to-bumper competition between cars that are due for the scrapheap.
This year's event has more than 100 teams from all over the country - as far away as Illinois and Virginia - competing with vehicles of all ages including Nuthin' But A Z Thang's 1976 Datsun. During the two-day 14.5-hour endurance race, infractions may send teams to the penalty box for a time out. Speedway Children's Charities New Hampshire Chapter sells passes that will get the team out of the humiliating and time consuming penalty like dancing the Macho Man or painting a landscape on the car. Teams, which each include two drivers and as many crew members as they want, are encouraged to decorate the lemons and wear costumes to the event.
Tickets are $30 for the weekend, include infield access, and a portion of the proceeds go to Speedway Children's Charities New Hampshire Chapter.
For ticket information for events at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, including this weekend's events and the upcoming Gift of Lights, Nov. 23 - Dec. 31, visit the speedway website at www.NHMS.com or call Fan Relations at (603) 783-4931.
