El Taxi Perdido's Blog

First a quick recap of Day 2 – we won our class and posted strong times throughout the day. We’re sitting 12th overall going into some tight twisty stuff for Day 3. I’m behind the wheel today and our first speed section is about to start after a very chilly 170km transit from the hotel to this great mountain road high above Pachua. Stay tuned for more fun!

It’s 7:40am and I’m cold for the first time since arriving in Mexico. Not complaining, I’m actually grateful for the cool air because we’ll be sweating all day again.
So as you can see from the photo, we manage to be quicker than the big, Corvette-powered, 600hp Caddy yesterday. So today we line up in front of him. Great, but we’ll be watching our mirrors. We’re 13th overall. Lucky number 13!

As usual my timing sucks. While I was in the lobby dealing with a lost passport issue (I may be stuck here) they announced the winners of our class. El Taxi 1st, Taz Harvey Datsun 510, 2nd and a very quick Porsche 914, 3rd.
This result puts us 12th overall. But it’s a long race and while we celebrate this moment, we’ve got to pace ourselves. Tomorrow we run to Puebla and Conrad’s driving.

Here we are sitting 9th in with all the big boys. The day started off a little slow but once I woke up (around the second speed stage) we picked up the pace. Today’s route favored the high horsepower cars, meaning lots of straights and fast corners. But we held our own managed to turn in a cumulative time of 58:13. As I write this I’m sitting waiting for the official results to find out if that’s a good time that keeps us up front where there’s less confusion or if our time was back of the pack. Stay tuned.

It’s 92 degrees in the shade here and humid. Perfect weather for putting on a one-piece, fire proof suit, helmet and gloves and then sitting in a hot car. And that’s exactly what we just did. The race starts tomorrow, but our starting position is determined by today’s qualifying speed section. It was an 8km section of closed road with only a couple of tight turns (#3′s). The rest were 0′s, 1′s and 2′s. Pretty straightforward…until you add wrecked cars on the side of the road, oil in the middle of it and one slower Volvo all over it.
Our assigned qualification start time just happened to be about 2/3 of the up the 115 car field. Unfortunately that meant lots of chances for cars to wreck, dump oil or be slower before we had our turn. And that’s exactly what happened. At least three cars were “off” in the jungle and one dumped a trail of oil about 3km long. We also caught up to the Volvo gridded in front of us. As the cars are flagged off every :30 seconds, this means that we were considerably quicker. Of course I keep writing “we” but Conrad was driving and he did a masterful job of avoiding all of the hazards and still bringing us in with a very quick, 4:02 qualifying time. Now, we don’t yet know where that puts us, but for reference, a 2010 BMW M3 that went first (he’s in the Exhibition Class) turned a 3:56 and had none of the aforementioned hazards. Way to wheel it Conrad!!!
Tomorrow our first speed section of the actual race is this same section of road and I’m driving so we’ll see if I can improve, or at least stay on our pace without the BS in the road. Saludos for now!

This event draws cars of all types. From Alfa’s to VW’s. Speaking of which… Team Tan! Gotta love ‘em.

…that screw you up. This photo is of the tiny microphone that goes in my helmet. There is also one in Conrad’s helmet. Along with the ear pieces, this is what allows us to “call corners” for each other as we switch off driving.
Just for shits and grins we decided to test ours and good thing we did. Mine didn’t work and required some fancy micro surgery to get it healthy again.
Leave it to Dr. Conrad! Now he’ll have no choice but to listen to me barking in his ear every other day. “Testing, testing. Is this thing on?”

You know it’s a dangerous race when part of the required equipment at tech inspection are special knives mounted within arms reach (one driver, one navigator) so that you can cut yourself out of your seat belts if you’re hanging upside down in them. Well, we passed Tech Inspection, knives securely in place. It all went pretty smoothly except for the part where we turned on the headlights to demonstrate that they work and one started to smoke! It took a little Spanglish smooth talking to convince the inspector that a smoking headlight didn’t pose a serious threat to our, or anyone else’s safety. That and I promised to buy a new headlight. Luckily for us, the old style VW Beetle is the most ubiquitous car in Mexico and its headlights will fit our car. (No, we didn’t steal one).
Today, the team will fine tune a few things and maybe enjoy a little sight seeing. I hear the beach front bar has incredible vistas! Stay tuned.

As I write this, Bill Mertz and Ed Adams are somewhere in Mexico hauling the Taxi behind the trusty Range Rover. They crossed the border this morning with only one vehicle permit and two vehicles. Nice work guys! Yours truly waited too long to apply for the Taxi permit and the car had to leave before it arrived. But no worries, because Bill and his Poker face made it across. Thanks again Memo!
The rest of the team will meet up with them on Tues in Huatulco for tech inspection, etc. Be safe guys. Don’t buy any cars along the way, Ed!