El Taxi Perdido's Blog

Okay, it’s 6am and I’m in the lobby of the incredible Quinta Real hotel in Zacatecas. This hotel used to be a bull ring and the town is over 475 years old. It’s so beautiful, it rivals anything I’ve ever seen in Europe.

Okay, but enough of the tourist stuff; yesterday we left with Conrad at the wheel driving like a man with a purpose. His purpose? to keep the car in one piece for the final day. Well he did more than that. He ran so well and so fast that we won yet another 1st in class. And his run included the intimidating La Buffa run; a 12 km twisty road on the side of a mountain overlooking Zacatecas. The thing about La Buffa is that it is has some very fast straights that lead up to it’s very sharp turns, all the while hugging the side of a very high mountain. This is a stage that claims a lot of cars that over drive it. In fact, yesterday about 8 cars had ‘incidents’. We weren’t one of them. Despite my best efforts to mess things up (more on that in a minute), Conrad brought it in Zaca fast and solid. I on the other hand was all thumbs, including when I tried to help him rejet the carbs and dropped the carb cover cap down into the spring channel, where it could not recovered without removing the wheel. What does Conrad do? He pulls a plastic hotel room key out of his bag, cuts it in a circle, pushes a whole through it and makes a new cap with some tape to top it all off. He’s amazing! And we’re back on the road. What a great day. And it included a great service stop where the whole team donned our new team t-shirts (thank you John!). Here are some photos from the day.