Racing Day 3

Day 3

The last day of racing. Plan of attack: keep the car on the road and in one piece!

Riding with me today are racers John and Chrislana Gregory from Vancouver. Unfortunately their Studebaker decided to really hurt itself on Saturday and instead of putting a whole new engine in for just one more day of racing, John and Chrislana played it safe and drove Servicio with me! And what a blessing they were to have along.

Shields, Chrislana, John, Dad, Dyana

The course for today's race was to the east of Chihuahua, with some breathtaking vistas of dramatic rock formations and jagged mountains amidst the brittle landscape. The only car that needed our assistance on the way to the servicio stop was Jorge and Dyana in the white LT Special...they, like Dad, had a "fuel issue." Fortunately, I had gas in the cans in the back of the truck (learning from not having any before!).

Dyana and Shields:

We were able to see a few of the starts of the speed sections. It gave me goosebumps to see and hear the countdowns and then the impressive roars or the engines as they laid rubber and drove off into the horizon.

Then, on the 2nd half of the day, some troubles started to hit the tired cars. Lars and Felipe were prey to knarly turns. Their beautiful car ended up sideways in a ditch on the right side of the road (which was the lesser of the two evils because the left side was about a 100 foot drop off).

They were able to retrieve the Studebaker and load it on a trailer. Hopefully they'll get her all fixed up for La Carrera in October!

So on John, Chrislana and I ventured to keep up with the race. And who else do we stumble upon, but Stewart and Linda, the other couple from Vancouver, and they fried ANOTHER alternator! I think this was their 3rd, and John helped them switch to the 4th. Ay yay yay! The good news was that it was fixable and that it happened on the last speed section of the race. By this time of helping so many people we were having a good ol' time:

On the road again after getting they up and running and we came across Alan from Seattle and their Volvo. They had completed the speed sections, but then blew a piston while hauling ass back to town. Way to go guys! :) Fortunately there was one more Servicio with a trailer so we pushed the Volvo onto the trailer to get it back to Chihuahua.

And yet again, I arrived DFL back to the hotel. I think I am going to start my new racing team: DFL Racing!

At least we can count our blessing that no one was injured today.