La Carrera - 10/29 report

[DBesic@domain.elided]

Mike Besic writes:

"Ok here`s some more... starting right where I left off last night...

The boys meanwhile went to the driver's meeting - awards banquet. Apparently 
there will be one of these for each day. Are you sitting down? Martin and 
Patrick were on the podium in 3rd place of 7 cars in Sport Menor and came 
back with a trophy. You couldn't pry the smile off our faces with a crowbar! 
Not bad for a couple rookie rallyists driving a warm street car!

Jorge in the other Sprint had problems all day. The generator fried early in 
the race and the battery died. They ended up rotating batteries with the 
chase car all day.
The 2 cars ahead of us are 2 rather hot Porsche 356`s. There is an orange one 
with Orange Crush sponsorship that is basically a full race car with lights 
and street tires. Very low, very fat and very fast. The other has a show 
quality silver paint job, lots of motor and driven by experienced rallyists. 
In all there are 7 cars in Sport Menor: 2 Alfas and 3 356`s. The ultimate 
Mexican Porsche/Alfa challenge.

Saturday came early.  Ken and I did a few last minute checks and got Patrick 
and Martin off to the start of today`s leg. Jorge in the other Sprint thinks 
they fixed the charging problem and are gonna give it hell today. The boys 
race route takes them through more twisty mountain roads while our support 
vehicle route to the service stop takes us on a toll road. I am jealous.

Ken and I arrive at the service stop around an hour before the front runners 
are scheduled to arrive and set up our pit in the parking lot and wait. The 
big ground pounder Stude`s arrive 20 minutes late along with other American 
muscle cars with a rather radical looking VW beetle driven by a Mexican hot 
shoe. Ken and I scratched our heads... what`s HE got under the hood?

The two Porsches arrived then our boys. They had no major complaints other 
than "we need more power through the mountains" yah yah. I did a quick spark 
plug check. They looked perfect. Gave everything a quick check over, fueled 
it up and called it good. They got on their way and Ken and I returned to the 
toll road to Puebla and our hotel, the Crowne Plaza. The hotel must have know 
that the Italian contingent was arriving as they had a new silver 550 
Maranello displayed prominently in the lobby. The hotel is very elegant with 
literally tons of marble and many paintings depicting Pueblo`s history. Turns 
out there is a huge, and judging from the  formalwear, very expensive wedding 
going on tonight and also some sort of chef`s convention. Needless to say, 
the place was packed. Big hotel, but of course - small parking lot.  Ken 
snaked the trailer into the back lot and we managed to hog enough space for 
the rig with the 2 Giuliettas next to us. It made for cool pictures. We put 
the Alfa up on the jack stands, pulled the wheels and checked everything. 
Martin mentioned that on one particularly fast downhill straight, he said the 
Sprint`s speedo was past the last number..., there was a dip in the road and 
the car bottomed our pretty hard. I crawled underneath but only found the 
sacrificial pan guard got really buzzed. He says 6000 RPM in fifth is all 
she's got... hmmmm..."

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