Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Crash, Bang, Boom

Today was not a good day!

On the first speed stage the Gypsy Wind blew out a water pump seal and was down for the count. Bobby and Fernando backtracked almost 200 km to pick them up and trailer the car to Aguascalientes.

On the 2nd speed stage the Bag of Nails slid off a corner, narrowly missed a tree and slid down a slight embankment. The car was undamaged but they had to wait until the entire speed stage was complete before a School Bus towed them out of the ditch. They missed the 3rd speed stage entirely, ran the 4th from the back of the back and got to the mid-day service. By that time the rocker arm that bothered us in day 2 had completely disinigrated. Rather that destroy the motor Richard decided to trailer the car to Aguascalientes and put in our spare motor. Because they missed 4 speed sections and the final arch they placed 42nd for the day and are pretty much out of the running for a Historic C placing.

The place where we put the Bag of Nails onto the trailer was the exact same location that we loaded Freddy last year. Very depressing.

Both cars are now fixed and will be running tomorrow for the race to Zacatecas. See here for the route: http://www.lacarrerapanamericana.com.mx/ruta/nvo/7_AGUASCALIENTES_ZACATECAS.pdf

Other highlights of the day:

1) The racers saw two additional dead horses on the Mil Cumbre route.

2) Jason, Todd and Sheamus saw a pick-up truck leading two cows down the wrong way of the interstate at high speed. One cow couldn´t run fast enough and was being dragged.

3) We once again stayed in a beautiful hotel and town that we saw almost nothing of.

Keep your fingers crossed for good luck on the last two days.