Day 3 of Competition

Today I was back in the co-pilot seat for one of the nastiest transition stages. We were going into Mexico City to the Formula 1 track for a stage made of 5 laps around the track, then crossing Mexico City to Queratero.

Right from the start the organization of this day was a disaster (are you noticing a theme here yet?). We had a 7:00 AM start in the middle of Puebla to get us to the Formula1 track in time to run before the Champ Cars started warm up. Unfortunately it seemed that the organizers were not particularly organized or ready for the early start and 7:00am came and went without them showing up.

When they did show up, they had with them timesheets that went off a 7am start, even though we actually set off some time after 7:15. That meant we had about 90 minutes to cover 100 miles to the Z control at the end of the stage at the track. With the last 5 miles on surface streets in Mexico City at rush hour. One of the good things about this race is that provided you have your official stickers on the side of the car, the Federales on the freeways encourage you to go quicker rather than pulling you over. We got to the track just in time. We were immediately waved out onto the wet track to run our laps. It was total chaos. By the time we were on our 2^nd lap there were probably 40 cars on the track, ranging from 6-700hp Studebakers to a 3 cylinder, 2 stroke Saab. The Elise showed off big time at the track, especially in the wet. Some of the cars seemed to have half mile braking zones, so it was easy for the Elise to go down the inside and nip round the corner.

(Picture courtesy of Bret Haller)

(Picture Courtesy of www.LaCarreraPanamericana.com.mx)

On leaving the track, we had to make our way across Mexico City. We had clear and concise instructions, with the distance on the odo for every marker along the way. That would have made it easy, but for some reason the road we were supposed to be taking was closed. A main freeway through the middle of town shut down just when we wanted to use it.

We got lost.

Luckily there is a fairly nifty way to get round this problem. Find a taxi, tell him which road you’re trying to get on, then follow the taxi there. It worked well for us in Mexico City.

The afternoon speed sections were around Queretaro, on mountain roads that looked a little like those around Malibu. The chaos from lost cars through Mexico City persisted into the start of this section, so we started with a fairly slow Mercedes 30 seconds in front of us. About 5 miles into the stage, Rachel pulled off a pass, out of a corner and into a short straight. With a wall on one side and a steep drop off on the other, the pass was fairly exciting, to put it mildly. It was a great piece of driving.

There was only one crash today, a 1953 Corvette that went into the concrete wall at the track. The contact didn’t seem to be very hard, and as they have the best mechanic here on their team there is every chance that the car will be fixed for tomorrow.