Oaxaca And Technical Inspection

Our arrival in Oaxaca meant we could get a little extra sleep, we would be spending four nights here before the start if the race on Friday. Technical inspection is a process where the car is
looked over for safety and mechanical violations. They want to make sure you have a helmet and driving suit, seat belts and fire extinguisher and don't have something under the hood you shouldn't. The tech inspection was a few blocks down from our hotel at a baseball field where the local Oaxacan team played.
The car and it's suspect clutch went down on the trailer, and all seemed to work again during the unloading process. Now began a long day of standing in lines for registration and for the tech guys to look at the car. Registration consisted of getting your Mexican racing license(we already had ours from Chihuahua), a medical examination, getting a tracking GPS unit, your route book and official the swag, and generally just sighing your life away in case something happened during the race. I'm glad we started early to get the car done, because as the 3 days of inspection wore on, tech seemed to get more rigid in their scrutiny of the cars, especially the roll cages. A crash last year by a convertible XKE Jaguar that seriously injured the co-pilot had the tech guys send many cars to the welder to add reinforcement. That was good for some and not so good for others because of the quality of the work. The Chevy passed tech, with a couple of recommendations for improving our cage. Last came putting on the colors of the La Carrera Panamericana. That was something I had looked forward to for a long time, we were officially in the race! The rest of the day was spent talking with other teams, having the cars name painted on and a map of the race route on the trunk. We met a lot of great people here, and I'll start mentioning a couple of them here. Parked next to us was the Scream Tangerine Team, two almost matching Porsche 356's, driven by 2 brothers and their friends. Their objective for the race was to beat the other brother, and it didn't matter where they finished overall. They also had the Scream Team Girls, cute Mexicans girls who would not have their picture taken with the Chevrolet. On the other side was Eddie M. and his crew

from Saugus, CA., who was driving a monstrous Camaro in the Unlimited Class. Everyone at the paddock was excited about something, whether it was passing tech, or not passing, qualifying coming up on Thursday or the race itself. The day ended with most everyone leaving their cars at the field with security watching over things. That evening our third Musketeer arrived, Scott Kirn, who would be crewing and following us in with the truck and trailer during the race. Our next hurdle would be to see if our current clutch was going to make it or not.

Next Time: The Clutch That Slipped