La Carrera Panamericana

Running a road rally is hard. Running a road rally in Mexico as part of La Carrera Panamericana is even harder. Our friends Emil and Keri are up for this adventure. They participate in the Unlimited Class with their Porsche GT3. GTspirit.com is happy to provide you some of their latest updates. For more updates by Emil and Keri visit La Carrera Daily.

Today, Keri and I did our first driving for La Carrera. We pre-ran the qualifying stage, It took about 9 minutes to get out there, cruising at about 250 kph, 5 minutes to find the start of the qualifying stage, and about 8 minutes to drive the qualifying route.

Of course, this was not during officially sanctioned driving time, so we were dealing with traffic on the toll road (a few cars and trucks, a couple of goats and a pedestrian or two) some fans at the toll booth, and other La Carrera drivers on the qualifying zone.

Team Emil and Keri

Yes, fans.

People in Mexico LOVE this event. We got to the toll booth and found the right lane blocked. A bunch of at the tool booth waved us forward into the coned off area. They started taking pictures by the car, asking questions, and for post cards. We’ve been handing out post cards like mad. Yesterday we had an autograph session at the baseball stadium — it was weird. Right now, there’s some Mexican kid with a picture of my GT3 on his wall.

ANYWAY, the qualifying route is highly technical. It’s on the side of a mountain. Without a guard rail. At very high speeds. The road is smooth. Like, freshly paved Watkin’s Glen smooth. And banked. Like, seriously banked. Like, if these roads were in the US people would be scared to drive on them banked. We passed a few La Carrera cars on the side of the road… slowing to make sure they were ok, of course.

Needless to say, it was a ridiculous amount of fun.

No photos today, but I did make this in-car video for your amusement. We’re still working out the audio in the car, but I doubt it’ll improve much in the speed sections.

[via La Carrera Daily]

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