Day 3 of Mexican Road Racing

Our clutch is failing. It engages at the top of the pedal travel, typical of worn out disc behavior. But amazingly, once it engages, it seems to stick tight.

Additionally, I am sick. I awoke early with a nasty headache which has not let up. I am feverish and my stomach is not happy. Press on regardless, they say.

Our driving technique in the speed stages has to be a little different now because of the clutch. At the start, i slowly let out the pedal, and as we begin to creep forward I can finally accelerate away and we're off to the races. Upshifts are normal so far, but downshifts are a bigger strain on the clutch and require hesitation for rpm matching to get the clutch to hook up.

Our trusted assistant, Phil Hartman, is following us in the truck today, since we expect the clutch to fail at any time. Obviously we are not optomistic. Throughout the first stage we discover that we are almost able to race normally---though we are certainly loosing a bit of time by shifting less. I'm not able to utilize the just the peak of the torque curve this way, but the engine is pretty tolerant of abuse. Today's schedule has 4 long speed stages in each direction.

By mid-day, we have changed from pessimistic to cautiously optomistic. By the start of the return runs in the afternoon, the clutch has to have a pause at each shift to allow it to catch and we can't downshift very much. Once it locks up, it stays locked up, fortunately. My head is still hurting badly, my helmet and uniform are sweat soaked, and every set of S-curves make me have to consider what vomiting in an enclosed helmet will be like. Pressing on.

Curiously, being miserable seems to have an odd way of concentrating my attention during the speed stages, and we seem to be very fast. The transits are more of a constant struggle to stay awake.

In the last few speed stages the timing people have been muttering to us about how fast we're going and that we're catching the racers in front of us. After surviving the final speed stage, the timing guys congratulate us and tell us that unofficially we are only seconds behind the Viper. Can that be?

Well, it turned out to be true. We finished first in class and 3rd place overall today just 3 seconds behind the second place Viper of Jerry Churchill!

Our overall finish for the three days was first in class and fifth overall. We still don't really believe it, but it certainly proves the budget racer concept. Good preparation, great tires, good car, good navigation, adequate driving---all combine to make our racing experiment a success.

What else have we learned? You can certainly have a blast in a cheap racecar! And you can even win! We have argued again the merits of e30 vs e28, and I think we could have had the same success with a e28 535i.

This was the first running of the Chihuahua Express and it will hopefully not be the last. It was a great event. Chacho Medina, the race organizer, hopes for double the entrants next year and we see no reason he won't get them. We raced hard for 600+ km on public highways over three days, and we are worn out. This is real racing and a lot of it. We'll be back.

But in what? We finished ahead of both modern and older racecars in a piece of junk M20 powered e30----just think what a real BMW would do. Pick ANY M3 and to be a race winner! What would be the most fun? Maybe your car....

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