Day 2 of Mexican Road Racing
Terry Sayther with Rhett Hubertus and Phil Hartman
There are some highly experienced road racers here and this morning I
asked some of them for help with a problem I´ve been having with
our car while racing. It seems that while fully suited up with Nomex racing
uniform and gloves on, I´m having trouble with the small size of
the electric window and AC buttons. You´d think that their greater
experience would have lead them to a cure for this simple problem, but
they were not helpful.
Today´s events spanned 11 hours of driving. Here´s a typical
slice of that time. We start by transitting, that is driving on public
roads at something like normal speeds along with regular normal traffic.
This trasit stage ends at a checkpoint where we are given a time to write
down. We then proceed to another checkpoint nearby that is the start of
a ´´speed stage´´, a public road blocked off by
the police for our temporary use. Speed stages are chosen for their challenge
for the drivers, but they also have to have acceptable racing surfaces.
Of course it must be possible to close the road to outsiders during the
event.
Each speed section is run by every car that is able to get to its beginning
within a 15 minute window; break down more then that length of time and
you will miss that stage. Cars are waved away at 1 minute intervals &
after every 5 or so cars medical & official cars run through the stage
making sure all is well. At the end of the stage the cars pass the final
timing point at speed, then stop to have their times recorded. At that
point they commence a transit section to get to the next speed stage.
Today we raced 10 speed stages, some only a few minutes, some 30 minutes
or more long, for a total of 202km of speed stages, 610km alltogether.
The roads chosen for speed stages today were VERY challengin --- both
from a standpoint of achieving maximum speed, but also from a brake conservation
angle. Knowing that today would tax the E30 brakes, we did what we could
to use engine braking to help slow the car. The result? Our clutch now
feels ready to fail. We nursed it back into town, & we really didn´t
feel like we lost much time.
We had another problem today --- in one stage the engine began to violently
cut in & out. After the next checkpoint we stopped & found that
the main relay was loose & falling out of its socket. Problem solved
& fast!
Another surprise came today in a long downhill straight speed section
when the Lemon got up to 148mph indicated speed! If anyone anywhere had
told me that was possible, I would have said they were hitting the wacky
weed again. UNBELIEVABLE!
We had a great day, & we felt like we were about as fast as we could
possibly be. There were not so many problems today with other cars, the
one Mercedes bottomed out & lost its oil pan & suspension. They
will not be driving back to Virginia tomorrow... Ooops!
Divisadero, our mid-point & lunch stop today lies at the top of Copper
Canyon. Barranca del Cobre in Spanish is a spectacular canyon, actually
bigger & deeper then our Grand Canyon. A truly beautiful site.
Yesterdays official results, you´ll remember, had us listed last
in class & last among running cars due to a large scoring error. Today
brings a change --- 1st in class awards to both Rhett & I. Also today
we have an award [in the IRONY department, I´m sure] for ¨Best
Appearing Car¨ by default in the 1966-1990 class, where we were the
only entrant. Amazingly enough, we were 5th fastest overall today, &
with the correction to yesterday´s times we are 7th overall for
the 2 day´s total. WOW!