Day 6, Aguascalientes, Mexico

Aguascalientes, Mexico

Most importantly, the Mini Mania Mini is running flawlessly. More so than my father and I are to be sure. La Carrera is about 1 month´s worth of experiences compressed into one week, and if it weren´t for the video and photographs it would be most difficult to remember what happened.

When I last checked the standings we´re in 24th place overall and 5th out of the 6 cars considered to be in the Unlimited Class. As quick as the Mini is through turns, there´s just no way it can hold it´s own against the other Unlimited cars when the roads straighten up. We were hoping that some of the velocity sections would favor our car, and to some extent they have, but only for about 30% with the rest of the section having a premium on top speed.

Speaking of top speed, our GPS tells us that we reached 130mph in the high speed stage through Mexico City. We were feeling pretty good about that until I talked with my peers in the Unlimited; Kevin in the Subaru tells me his speedo pegs at 160mph and they went well past it; Emil in the GT3 just laughs and says what ever the Subaru does, add a whole bunch more too it; and Eddie in the bitchin Camaro won the stage and must have been damn close to 200mph before the checkered flag.

The one factor that *might* get us onto the podium is attrition. Many, many cars have been nixed due to mechanical failures, I´d guess at least 20. There has also been some ghastly accidents so far, including some dead animals and injured locals. Two drivers we met early on in the trip and have become friends with had the worst accident so far. Their corvette slide out in a turn at about 90mph and clipped a tree, just behind their right rear tire where the fuel tank and pump happen to be. The tree did two unfortunate things: the least dangerous was igniting the fuel, the worst part was it straightened them out and aimed their car straight off the road and into a 3 foot high boulder. They hit the boulder straight on and it flipped them ass over tea kettle 5 or 6 times, landing upside down and engulfed in flames. The copiloto told told the driver he couldn´t get out and wasn´t going to make it, but as a last thought figured he might as well try. Somehow he squeezed through the window opening and climbed about 6 feet from the wreck before it was totally engulfed in flames, literally 2 seconds away from dying. Both of them have suffered some pretty serious burns, and should be seeking medical care right about now in San Antonio´s burn center.

As for my dad and I, we´ve been keeping things running smooth. This is our first year down here and all we want to do is finish safely and make it back home to our family. Honestly it didn´t seem like such a difficult thing to do when we left Santa Cruz, but a few days on La Carrera has taught us differently. I´ve been taking turns rated 0-1 flat out, for 2s I´ll back it off a little and for anything rated 3 and above I´m down into second gear and making damn sure I don´t loose it. Some of these turns have literally 100s of feet straight down drops below them, with a couple sections damn near 1,000 feet verticle. It takes a lot of will to stay on the throttle when you know what awaits a bad decision in those turns. And of course there´s no accounting for the occassional dog, horse, cow, fallen tree, boulder, chicken, or crowd of cheering people hidden behind any given turn. We´ve come accross all of those things at some point, some times at near 100 mph when all you can do is make the most minor of adjustments without dire consequences. It´s quite literally crazy to be doing this, but we sure are having fun so far.

My apologies for the lack of updates from the road. As we are without a crew, there is simply no time to spare at any point in the day. We generally wake up around 5:45am, are on the road by 7 or 8, and get to our checkpoints just around night fall. The towns we pull in to have massive celebrations going when we arrive. All the drivers park and take photos with kids, sign pictures and tee shirts, tell stories about what they´ve seen and done, and then spend an hour trying to find the hotel. The driver´s meetings generally run from 8:30 to midnight, and then the jockying for taxi´s back to the hotel can take another hour. 4 or 5 hours sleep has been the norm, it´s crazy. I literally fell asleep in the car waiting a red light a couple days ago.

I do however, have tons of great photos and video to share with you all. It takes unfortunately too much time to get that processed and online down here, but when I get back I´ll start sending them in ad naseum.

Today we have a 12 noon start time, which is why I have time to write this now. I´m off to eat breakfast, rotate the tires and check my brakes. We head in to Zacatecas tonight, and then we´re off to the finish line in Nuevo Laredo tomorrow. Keep those fingers crossed!

And again, check out the live tracking on the internet, it will tell you all the things I don´t have time for :) We´re car 554!