short and sweet, just some pics- Day 2

In the Queue ready to head out on Day 2

Good Luck Duck

F loving every minunte of it

Tricky signing autographs

Mr. Nicks hard work finally starting to pay off.

wake up and go

Mr. Nick is doing a few last minute tweaks to the Bell, she seems to be ready to run. The rest of us are packing up our gear and getting the support truck, The Red Bourbon packed up and ready to go. Hopefully everything goes well and we can see them off and get to the first check point on time.

Here is our Service route for Today.We have some sections that overlaps with the race- so timing is everything. We can't be on the same roads as the cars for obvious safety reasons.


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~el guapo

go go go!

The Blue Bell has been fussy about driving under the pressure of such a mixed up team I think. She is nice to one of or 2 of us, and a dogs back to the rest. much tweaking and turning of bits and bolts and we are finally ready (maybe) to start racing.

We spent the day getting to Oaxaca, wit the team in the Suburban, and the Bell on a tilt tray. Sorry for Tricky who road with the Bell and made taco's along the way with 2 other grease monkeys.

6 other cars have crashed,

2 of the 6 are no longer racing

all out of ICU.

More to come...

~d

Two and a half hour Co Driver briefing last night in a nearby hotel. Interesting statistic no.1: greater than 50 % of all incidents happen on first two speed stages of first day ie on fewer than 10% of total speed section distance. Many others fall by the roadside trying to get to the front of their respective class grids. With memories of our 2006 campaign and this to hand I slept well.  A rare occurence.

Thursday morning welcomed us with glorious sunshine and 32 degrees of heat. Perfect conditions for donning a two layer racesuit, gloves , helmet, untold strapping devices and sitting in a 50 year old car cooking on gas. Off to the prequal road following our first tulips and thankfully not getting lost. Trip meter all over the shop so am somewhat blind in some ways. Hopefully we can recalibrate today having spoken to a bloke called Dave . The speed sections feel somewhat like riding a bike,it all came back. A little rusty but we will get there. Car was not 100% so the combination was not a perfect start but it was a safe one. Which is our game plan. To have any position we must finish. Which is far from easy.

Unfortunately some fell off their bike, there was an unreasonable snigger from some in Team 304 who muttered something about Germans. Our Class, Historica 'B' is filled with 911 Porsches. Bring on the rain and a few goats. Apparently...{!] two Porsches did not stick to the tarmac. We find out more this evening in the driver's briefing.

Apparently.

word of the day is OK.

We all packed up the support truck, and followed F & Tricky down to the inspection first thing this morning. The queue wasn't too long to get safety inspection done. We had some last minute tweaks to make to the Blue Bell and by 2:30 we had our to race number put on along with the stickers for the sponsors of the race and of course the "OK" in on the window to race.

It was a long day, but we made it thru. More tweaks to the car, trying to get it just right.  Pre Qualifying is tomorrow... I think its a 10k run with a few other things mixxed in. More to come.
~d

Nick has been a star today. He's starting to get his head round race engines and today we started to find some power. New disks arrived from MEX but no time to fit them before pre qualification at early O'Clock tomorrow. Everyone worked hard today and caught a fair bit of sun doing it. It 9:50 PM and not had dinner yet, everyones shattered. Big day tomorrow. F

Been busy...

Its been a busy day at the office, everyone up before 7 and working by 8. After a full day were (almost) ready for scruteneering tomorrow. Nick's worked wonders with the engine and torque has returned, few more tweeks tomorrow and we should be good. It's been as humid as hell and were all feeling it. The place is beautiful but not much chance to see it or explore. Looking forward to getting the paperwork out of the way and getting started. Keep thinking during the day of stuff to write but seem to forget it all when it comes to the blog. Must try harder... F

Co-Pilot Update

Back to school this morning, head down in the route maps: page upon page of 'Tulip' diagrams signposting the speed and transit sections of each day. Day one is 401 km of which a quarter is on closed roads at speed. The morning presents 5 speed sections at +/- 25m above sea level. The afternoon a climb of 1700 metres into the cloud and into Oaxaca. 5 more speed sections in the afternoon. Maybe 2 fuel stops. Out on the coastal road to Salina Cruz this afternoon having a look at the twisting roads which are something else. Pot-holes the size of a cow. Other teams back in Huatulco show up with pantechnicons and 8 or so crew with gleaming Maserati's and a beautiful Mk 1 Escort Mexico. Let's hope they stay beautiful. 105 teams or so and we are still, 'apparently' the only British contingent . It is a long way from The Bell in Ticehurst and a long way from Rosie, Hunter and Sienna.

Huge thanks to Gary at the Motor Sport Association for sorting my Competition B Licence .

Scrutineering and practice runs tomorrow, sorting left 3's from left 2's..missing pot-holes..

a note from F

Mexico. Were here. I’ll just do the car…. We went out for a drive today with R which was good. First thing that hit me was I had forgotten just how hot the Jag is. And that was in shorts and a T Shirt. It’s going to be much warmer in a Nomex race suite.. On the up side the intercom system is really good (we have head sets so we can talk when we don’t have helmets on). When you take them off its really loud. The car feels good but the engine needs work to sort the pinking issue which makes it really hard to drive. We’ll change the brake pads to a softer compound as although the brakes stop well they seem to lack feel. We have new disks being delivered to the hotel so we’ll change them as we’ll (if they arrive in time). I have a list of stuff to do but it’s all small stuff. I will be happy when the engine issues are sorted at the moment that’s my big worry.
-f

Getting Orginized

Nick and I recovered the car from the shipping company. I guess Keys are over rated here in Huatulco. The guys had to jump the fence and figure out a way to get into 2 more locked gates so we could get the Car out of the warehouse.

After a bit of a late wake up, Mr. Nick and I went to pick up the rest of the crew at the airport. F was on a 2nd flight about an hour after everyone else. We had a couple of pints and waited for F to land. Getting to know each other and a little bit of our backgrounds. Remember that F is the only person on the team of 6 that knows everyone else.

We got back to the hotel and sat around and started going over what needed to be done. Lots to do still and I already feel like we are out of time to get it all done. I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like next week.

We had dinner at the hotel and the night finally ended later that anyone thought it would. But like the true professional that Mr. Nick is, up and ready to start working on the car.

Tricky and F took the Jag out for their first run this afternoon. Tomorrow, there will be lots of things to tune and bits to tweak. I am starting to feel like we are out of time already and the race is still days away.

More to come…
~El Guapo

pre-race preparations continue...

Mr. Nick and I found a beater of a Suburban to run as the support vehicle. Balding tires, check engine light blocking all odomitor functions- so we have know idea how far we were actually driving- No Maps, No Pesos, and spotty español skills at best we venture off on our road trip to get to ahead start on the race preparations here in Mexico.


After a short 16hour drive from Mexico City- Mr. Nick and I finally got to the starting point. We have a busy day getting the car here to the hotel and sorting out some last minute shopping for the bits we didn't ship. Hopefully we are done before the pool bar closes.

I took a few snaps on the road yesterday and will get them posted.



View Huatulco, Oaxaca in a larger map


~El Gaupo

making my way down south.

Just wanted to let you know that I should be in Mex tonight around midnight. Working on getting a movie edited so I can post something. See you all soon.

~el Guapo

Starting it up...