How is it to drive a leg of La Carrera Panamericana with a 64 Superformance Shelby Daytona Coupe?
Thanks to Team # 452, who are the Canadian John Nielsen and Emine Wright, we getting a taste of it! In a 36 minutes long vid, they are taking us along three complete legs and showing us some pics of La Carrera 2007. Thanks!!!

La Carrera Panamericana: it’s truly a race. Every year La Carrera attracts more and more people from all over the world, in Mexico it’s becoming a bigger and bigger folk festival. At every start and finish city thousands of people are trying to catch a glimpse of the drivers and cars.

With the availability of digital camera’s all over the planet bigger then ever it’s no suprise that this years La Carrera Panamericana has more videos from fans and drivers than ever before. Of all the videos these two videos of Go Fast Energy Drink Mexico are worth watching especially:

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One week after the finish of La Carrera Panamericana, we are able to present you now the official final results of La Carrera. Like we reported earlier, Pierre de Thoisy and Frederic Stoesser are the winner of the 20th edition of the ultimate Mexican race. Their total time was 3:48:14. Impressive to see that the Unlimited Class winners Kevin Jones and Mark Williams finished with a total time of 3:22:58!!! That means a nearly 28 minutes lead to the ‘classic’ Carrera drivers. Still tragic is the Team Habich case. They finished in the ‘Exhibition’ class with a total time of 3:35:52. Without their disqualification, that would have been the first place of La Carrera Panamericana.

The official final results of the 20th edition of La Carrera after the jump!

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Pierre de Thoisy and Frederic Stoesser are the winner of the 20th edition of La Carrera Panamericana. Their Studebaker with the number 400 finished as well the last leg of La Carrera, which lead the drivers from Zacatecas to Nuevo Laredo.
The Oldsmobile driven by Doug Mockett and Angelica Fuentes finished second place. The broken clutch, which caused big problems on day 6, got repaired. So Mockett and Fuentes could approve their second place.
Gabriel Perez and Horacio Chousal finished on the third place with their Ford.

For the final standings of all categories, we are still waiting for the official results. But it seems like no big changes on the last day.
Winner of the category ‘Turismo Mayor’ is Pierre de Thoisy and Frederic Stoesser.
In the category ‘Turismo Prod’, making an excellent job, first place went to Gabriel Perez and Horacio Chousal. Bill Shanahan Murray Smith, in a precious white Corvette, take the victory in the Histórica “C”.
Histórica “B” winners are Toni Planken and Oliver Sommer with their Porsche. Richard Clark and Andrew Prill finished first in the ‘Sport Menor’ class also in Porsche. First place at the category ‘Sport Mayor’ went Sam Burg and Dyana Marlett in a LT. Even the bad crash of the LT couldn’t stop them.
Last but not least Carson Scheller and Schields Richardson are the winner of the ‘Original Panam’ category.

The Unlimited Class winners are Kevin Jones and Mark Williams. At the end, they finished with a 13 minutes leading. Bruce Redding and Ronald McRae finished second place and third place went to Emil Rensing and Keri Rensing.

Finally some news from our friends of Team Mini Mania! Father and son Herrick are participating in a special Mini Cooper S. They are driving in the Unlimited Class at La Carrera Panamericana. And so far they are doing a great job: they finished most stages around the 25 th place overall. As quick as the Mini is through turns, there’s just no way it can hold up against the other Unlimited Class cars when the roads straightens up. We keep our fingers crossed for you and the final day of La Carrera Panamericana!

To read the complete update of Team Mini Mania visit their Unlimited Class - Team Mini Mania Blog.

Yesterday Pierre de Thoisy had big problems with his car. That was the chance for Doug Mockett and Angélica Fuentes to get a total advantage of 1:20 minutes on de Thoisy. Normally it is impossible to catch up that big advantage. Especially with only 100 km of ’speed-stage’ left. But on day 6 the luck was on Pierre de Thoisy side. Doug Mockett had problems with his clutch and so he arrived at the 33th place. It looks like there is now no possibility left for Mockett to win the Carrera Panamericana. But everything can happen at La Carrera!

Pierre de Thoisy and Frederic Stoesser won day 6 of La Carrera. Second place went to Gabriel Perez and Horacio Chousal. Ralf Christensson and Anna Sorensson came in in third place.
At la Unlimited Class the first place went again to Kevin Jones and Mark Williams. John Nielsen and Emine Wright came in second place, before Bruce Redding and Ronald McRae on the third place.

Team # 432 had a not so lucky day 6. On a very fast left corner they had a spectacular ‘exit’. We are glad to report, that Mike Anderson and Steve Barnes are not hurt in that accident. Thanks to Elke and Leila, we are able to share some pics of the total crashed Chevrolet:

It’s been the fifth day of La Carrera Panamericana, which took the teams and their cars from Morelia to Aguascalientes. But let us start with the bad news: La Carrera had it’s first disqualification. For Team father and son Habich #105 the race is over. That make us sad to hear, especially since Team Habich was definatly one team which was able to win the complete Carrera. For Team Habich the race had already started unfortunate, with bad engine problems in the stage of the automobile race track of Querétaro. Like it seems now, they changed the engine to a smaller and less powerfull engine. But that was not the problem. Main issue with the smaller engine was the lower weight of the car. In a surprise weight check (which has never happened in the history of La Carrera) Team #105 was only 72 pounds too light, with an empty gas tank. Nearly ironic is the fact, that if they had refuelled (132 pounds of fuel), they would have passed the first ever surprise technical inspection. Excluding the Subaru of Kevin and Mark of the Unlimited Class, or ‘Exhibition class’ as the La Carrera Panamericana officials refer to it, Team Habich was the fastest team on most of the speed stages.

Good to hear that even though they got disqualified, Team Habich will finish La Carrera in the ‘Exhibition’ class and they are already planning to come back to Mexico next year and aim for the win of La Carrera Panamericana. Guys: we keep our fingers crossed for you!

Day 5 included some more stages of Mil Cumbres. And again fog and gravel made the route dangerous. Team Emil and Keri with their Porsche GT3 had big problems in the Mil Cumbres stages. Not only that the street was very slippy: their Rally-Navigation- System ‘Terratrip’ didn’t work. So they took it a little bit easier on day 5 and arrived second to last at the Unlimited Class.

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Day 4 lead the La Carrera drivers from Queretaro to Morelia. More than 70 cars, that survived the last 3 days of hard driving, started at 9.00 am at Queretaro, to one of the most thrilling legs of the 20th edition of La Carrera Panamericana: the Mil Cumbres.

Mil Cumbres is mystical, especially on a very cold and cloudy day like on day 4. The curves of Mil Cumbres are endless and the scenery is just perfect. This special place is preffered by all participants and fans. But on the other hand it is every year the most dangerous stage of La Carrera. On places you have no holes at the streets, you have gravel. Gravel and curves are not a good combination, especially if the most cars have rear-wheel drive.
But fortunately this year there were no bad crashed at Mil Cumbres.

Winner of day 4 was once again Pierre de Thoisy and co-driver Frederic Stoesser. Second were father and son Habich with their Studebaker Commander. Good to see Roger Habich and Daryl Habich back in race. On day 3 they had big problems with the engine. Luckely they managed to fix the problem. Third were Doug Mockett and Angélica Fuentes.

At the Unlimited Class, Kevin Jones Mark Williams did the best time on day 4, followed by Bruce Redding and Ronald McRae. Impressive is the 4 (!) minutes time difference between first and second place. Third place went to John Nielsen and Emine Wright.

On day 5 the drivers have to complete on of the longest legs of La Carrera with over 572 km.

La Carrera Panamericana has a huge fanbase in Mexico. And somehow we have the feeling, that alot of the fans are working at the police… Enjoy this two videos by the Unlimited Class and La Carrera Daily of a police escort ‘Mexican style’:

Day 3 lead our La Carrera drivers from Puebla to Querétaro. The first special stage of the day 3 leg was the local highway near Mexico City. The six center lanes were exclusive closed for the participants. Thousands of fans were there to take pictures and videos. They enjoyed to see the Studebaker’s, Porsche’s, Mercedes-Benz’s and Volvo’s reaching top-speeds around 250 km/h.

Winner of the 5.6 km long stage was Doug Mockett and Angelica Fuentes, with a 3 seconds lead on Pierre de Thoisy and Frederic Stoesser. Third was Jerry Chuchill with his precious yellow Studebaker. He made clear that it has a lot of power hidden inside an impeccable outside.

The race continued towards Cuautitlán Izcalli and after 3 more stages the drivers arrived at the new automobile race track of Querétaro. On this new race circuit the participants had to complete 6 rounds, before they arrived at the main square place at Querétaro. Doug Mockett and Angelica Fuentes won two more stages of day 3, but at the end of the day, they only placed second. Best complete time and therefore winner of day 3 are Pierre de Thoisy and Frederic Stoesser. Third place was conquered by Gabriel Perez and Horacio Chousal.

In our day 2 summary we already mentoined the Corvette that caught fire. Luckily nobody was injured during the accident. Elke and Leila (they participate with a 1969 Porsche 911 E) shared some pictures of the wreck of the Stingray:

Good news on the LT that crashed during day 1. With a lot of repair-metal and ducktape, it is hopefully able to finish La Carrera Panamericana.

Saturday’s starting city was Tehuacan. Start time was 9 am and the temperature at that time was already very high. That made the handling of the cars very difficult in those winding streets. Yesterday we already reported about the crash of the ‘Original Panamerican Class’ BMW. On saturday a silver Corvette lost control and flipped upside down. But the driver and co-driver managed to leave the car, before the car caught fire. Only minutes later the Corvette was completly destroyed by the fire.

The stage had a total lengh of over 600km. Winner of day 2 was the ‘Turismo Mayor’ class. With only 10 seconds in lead, Doug Mockett and Angélica Fuentes won the stage from Tehuacan to Puebla. Second was Roger Habich and Daryl Habich, third (due a 25 second penalty) Pierre de Thoisy and Frederic Stoesser. Day 2 winners of the Unlimited Class were once again Kevin Jones and Mark Williams in their Subaru.