We Finished! 3rd Place in Class, 46th Overall

Sorry about the lack of updates - between a lack of Internet access at some stopovers, working on the car at night, and general fatigue, this is the first opportunity to update the blog.

The most important news is after 7 (sometimes grueling) days, we finished in Nuevo Laredo! Everything else is a bonus compared to that. We ended up in 3rd place in the Original Panam class (out of 12 Original Panam cars that started), and 46th overall (out of about 100 cars).

Here's how we got there.

Chrislana and I flew into Laredo, Texas on Thursday, October 18. Duane had driven the rig with four cars to Laredo and we all met there, with about 20 other "Carreraistas" to form the "Coyote Convoy". We spent Friday doing some last minute shopping for spare parts, lubricants and the like, and school supplies to donate in San Miguel de Allende.

Very early Saturday the Convoy was off - 6 or 7 of us driving our cars, and the rest with trailers and transports. We crossed into Nuevo Laredo, Mexico without any difficulty - the border officials just waived us through, and we had little more than a cursory inspection at the customs checkpoint about 20 kms south of Nuevo Laredo. It was a long drive (close to 800 kms, if I remember correctly) on mostly good roads to San Miguel de Allende. We arrived around 5 pm. The Studebaker ran perfectly, which was a relief since I had not had a chance to put more than about 80 kms on the rebuilt engine.

Saturday night we attended the "Feed the Hungry" fundraiser. The Feed the Hungry charity provides lunches to hundreds of poor shoolchildren. We had a surprisingly good time. The Carreraistas were sprinkled amoung the tables with local residents, mostly Americans who have retired to San Miguel de Allende. Chrislana and I sat with a very eclectic group - a former director of a contemporary art facility in San Francisco, her partner who was involved in film, a retired investment banker who now sponsors a local gallery in San Miguel, a ghostwriter, a retired Delta pilot, and so on. As we sat down at the table and introduced ourselves, one of the locals leaned over and asked me if I was a professional race car driver...I had to confess that in my real life I was a tax lawyer....her disappointment was thinly veiled!

Sunday they hosted a car show in the local central square.






Here is that celebrity co-piloto, Chrislana, signing autographs.

San Miguel de Allende is a wonderful town of about 100,000 people, with a thriving arts community. About 10,000 ex-pats, mostly from the US but also from Europe and Canada, live there.

Monday morning we were off to Oaxaca. We put the Studebaker on the transport, and caught a lift with a father and daughter who were driving down to follow a friend in the race. It was a very long drive around Mexico City, and we had a very heavy rainstorm to contend with. After a few near death experiences on the drive, the race didn't seem so dangerous!


Here is the transport in Oaxaca, with our stude on top, and Stewart Robertson's stude (running in the modified class, Turismo Mayor) in the belly of the trailer.

The cars all assembled at the baseball field in Oaxaca. It was the usual chaos for the next four days. We had to prep the car checking brakes, changing the oil, setting up the Terratrip computer, and all the other little things. We also had registration, medicals, and tech inspection.

Here are the cars lining up for tech.

Wednesday evening was the co-piloto’s meeting. I believe there were 40 or so “rookies” this year, and the anxiety level at the meeting was high. The co-piloto’s job is to read the route book to navigate the transits, to ensure that the car pulls through the checkpoint at the beginning of each stage at the 60 second window allotted to the car, to obtain the car’s time card and have the timekeeper fill in the times at each checkpoint, and to provide the piloto with a running commentary from the route book describing each corners (direction and severity, graded 0 to 4), dips, rises and other road features during each speed section. In many respects the co-piloto’s job is far more difficult than the piloto.

The time trials (for the initial seeding of the cars) ran on Thursday afternoon about 30 kilometers outside Oaxaca, on a portion of the same section of the road that would be used for the first speed stage on Day 1. The cars were given staggered times to run. We were all conscious that the previous year there were three crashes during the time trial, and two of the cars were never able to rejoin the race. This was the first time Chrislana and I were together in the car with full race suits, helmets, Hans devices (restraints that hook on the helmets to prevent head and neck injuries) and intercoms, running a road section at speed. We took it real easy and everything went well. The most difficult part was waiting in line in the heat to file through the toll booth to return on the toll road to Oaxaca!

We had some concern because Duane had arranged for a retired truck driver from Washington to fly in on Wednesday evening to drive the rig. By late Thursday afternoon he had still not arrived, and Duane was starting to consider hiring a local driver, or maybe give Alex a crash course in driving a rig! Mexican traffic is not the place to learn how to drive a tractor with a double deck 4 car hauler. To our immense relief (mostly Alex’s!) the driver arrived Thursday evening.

Day 1 of the race commenced from the zocalo (main square) of Oaxaca with the usual chaos. The first challenge was to get our transport packed with our luggage, spare parts, etc., and the second was to find the starting arch in the zocalo. Although the zocalo was located only 12 blocks or so from the baseball field, the confusion of Oaxaca’s streets was enough to get anyone lost. We eventually had a Mexican family offer to lead us to the zocalo, an offer we gladly accepted. Here is the starting arch.

Every day is broken into 6 to 9 sections. The initial section is a transit (with other cars and trucks on the road) ranging from a few kilometers to fifty kilometers or so. Each car is given an allotted time to leave the starting arch, and the cars are spaced 30 seconds apart. The initial departure times are largely symbolic, and in practice virtually all cars leave early in whatever order they happened to line up. After the initial transit the cars line up outside the initial checkpoint, and usually there is a wait of up to 30 minutes before proceeding at the allotted 60 second window through the first checkpoint. At each checkpoint the time keeper fills out the time card. After the initial transit, the second section will commence with a timed speed stage ranging from 6 kilometers to 20 kilometers, with the road closed and cars released at 30 second intervals. This is true open road racing. Each speed stage is then followed by a transit to the next section, which begins with another speed stage, followed by a transit, and so on throughout the day. There will be one and sometimes two service stops during the day, to grab a bite, work on the car, or just get a breather from the hectic pace. Each day ends with a transit into the destination town, and the time cards are handed in at the arrival arch for the day’s results to be tabulated. The cars are then reseeded for the next day’s speed stages, in an effort to keep the fastest cars at the front.

Here we are at the start of Day 1.

We had an amazing time on Day 1. The car ran well, and other than a broken sway bar bracket, we had no major difficulties. Chrislana proved to be a fabulous co-piloto, navigating the transits, calling the times to enter each checkpoint perfectly (so we had no penalties) and most importantly calling the descriptions of the speed stages so I could set up for each corner (if I knew what I was doing, it might even help my times!).

Alex met us at the servicio stop mid-day - I think he enjoyed himself as well!

Day 1 ended in the zocalo of Tehuacan. The zocalo was literally packed with people to greet the race cars. There was a band pumping out music, and a special area to “feed and water” the race participants. We had a ball. We handed out pictures of the car, had our pictures taken with babies, children, girlfriends – you name it – signed all sorts of clothing, and we both signed a million autographs. The Mexican’s enthusiasm for the race was everywhere in evidence. I kept thinking “if only they knew what I do in my real life!”

That evening I helped Alex fabricate a new bracket for the sway bar, check the brakes and put new tires on the car. Later we went to the piloto/co-piloto dinner, and as usual it was running on Mexican time, which we found to mean allotted time plus about 1 hour.

Day 2 ran from Tehuacan to Puebla. Alex was piloto for Day 2, and I acted as co-piloto. Chrislana rode in the truck with the driver. The car ran well again, although during one of the transits we had a bit of an altercation with one of the numerous Mexican “topes” (speed bumps), which threw the front wheels out of alignment. We borrowed a set of ramps from a roadside repair shop and Alex was able to do a quick and dirty realignment – we managed to make the next checkpoint with only seconds to spare.

Here are me and Alex at the end of Day 2.

On Day 3 and 4 Chrislana was back in the seat as co-piloto, and I was again piloto. Day 3 ran from Puebla to Queretaro. The first speed section was a 7 kilometer stretch of the main freeway running through Mexico City - even though it was a Sunday, I think they caused a major traffic jam by closing the freeway so we could run this speed section. The last speed section of the day was run on the Queretaro race track, which was a lot of fun (except for the spin out into the gravel on the second turn...but we don't need to go into that!)

Day 4 was Queretaro to Morelia. This stretch includes the speed sections on Mil Cumbres, generally thought to be the most difficult speed stages of the trip. Between the tight corners, loose gravel and the dead donkey on the road, it certainly lived up to its billing. The sway bar bracket that we fixed on day 1 broke again, this time in a different place, so Alex and I had to work late to fabricate a replacement.

Day 5 ran from Morelia to Aguascalientes. Alex again drove as piloto, and I was co-piloto. We ran back up the same stretch of Mils Cumbres that we ran the previous day, this time in the reverse direction. The clutch had been acting up for a few days, requiring numerous adjustments. After the noon servicio stop, the clutch finally ceased operating althogether. We had to miss the last two speed stages, and beg a 160 km tow on one of the "sweep" trucks into Aguascalientes. That night Alex and I dropped the transmission, and removed the clutch. It turned out that the problem was a broken collar in the clutch linkage, and of course it was one of the few spare parts that I left in Vancouver.... if I had brought one, something else would have broken! We ended up welding the broken collar to the linkage shaft. Alex was a real trooper in getting this fixed. We finished most of the job in the early hours of the morning, working by headlamps, and we ready to go the next morning.

I was piloto and Chrislana was back as co-piloto for Day 6 and 7. Day 6 ran from Aguascalientes to Zacatecas, and Day 7 from Zacatecas to Nuevo Laredo. Speed sections into and out of Zacatecas are run on La Bufa, the mountain overlooking Zacatecas. A very challenging stretch of road. The last run to Nuevo Laredo includes several high speed sections, with very few corners. The old Stude was wound up about as fast as it could go.

It's hard to describe the feeling pulling into Nuevo Laredo - a mixture of relief, elation, fatigue. It's a real challenge keeping a 54 year old car running hard for 7 days. Thanks in large part to Alex, we were able to finish. That's the real victory, just to finish.

In the end we finished third in our class, and 46th overall.

The next day we crossed the border back into Laredo, and loaded the Stude back on the transport. The great Mexican adventure was over for another year.