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(Transcrito por TurboScribe.ai. Actualizar a Ilimitado para eliminar este mensaje.) Motor racing is a disease of the brain,

you know, you get affected by it.

I want to drive the speed sections.

Great!

Straight away.

They're not straight, there are burps and everything.

He had his first go in it today,

and um...

Couldn't see an awful lot, it was dark,

but it felt alright.

It was dark and wet, and he shat

himself.

It's all a terrible mistake.

We thought we were going to a terrible

arena.

No, exactly, I thought it was like a

ball pit.

Lots and lots of ogre and schoolboys getting

together and having heaps of fun driving fast

cars around Mexico, a beautiful country.

What more could you want?

Alright, so we're down here in southern Mexico,

near the Guatemalan border, getting prepared for our

six-day endeavour up to the Texas border.

Okay, so we start down here, Tuxla Gutierrez,

just near the Guatemalan border, that's tomorrow.

And that tomorrow takes us up to Oaxaca

at the end of the day.

The next day, second day, we arrive in

Mexico City.

The following day is San Luis Potosí.

On a rather short one, but I think

it's...

I don't know exactly, it goes to Zacatecas.

Fifth day we get up to Monterrey, and

then on the sixth day we finish up

at Nuevo Laredo, which is right on the

Texan border.

Six days and two and a half thousand

miles.

It's about 120 cars, and they're all from

the middle 50s or earlier.

A couple of the cars of great historical

interest, El Caballo de Herrero, was driven by

Ack Miller in the 1954 race, and finished

in seventh place behind the factory Ferraris and

Lancias and Porsches.

It's a 1927 Model T Ford on a

50 Ford chassis.

We had failed in the 52 race with

a standard American motor car, which was a

52 Oglebill, and the transmission let go of

me, right in Leon Guanajuato.

So, driving home slow and slow in the

Oglebill, we decided we would make our own

car.

Well, some of these cars are just almost

exact replicas of what I saw in 54.

The Mercedes, especially, and some of the Alfa

Romeos I got, and the little Porsches.

It made you think you're going back 40

years of time.

The car we vented is a C-Type

Jaguar, from about 1952.

Nick and Valentine are in another car, virtually

identical to this one.

I mean, it's actually one of the world's

greatest road races.

The distance, two and a half thousand miles,

what does that mean?

Well, that's about what an average family car

would do over three months.

So, three months condensed in six days.

It goes from sea level up to about

10,000 feet, which is a very big

skiing holiday in Europe.

What, unfortunately, is almost inevitable, are the dramas

that you get thrown in, where even however

well the car is prepared, something is probably

going to go wrong.

This is no real one, of course.

This is a replica.

It's been beefed up a bit, but it's

about as close to the real thing as

you can get, save for the roll cage.

Roll cages and belts and better brakes and

things like that.

It's heavy American metal against nimble European cars.

We were given a driver's briefing that was

clearly calculated to put the fear of God

into all of us.

We're basically told the road has been destroyed

by the rain, the bridges are washed away.

The Mexican police are going to arrest us

for the slightest infraction and throw us into

jail.

But, Matt, everything's looking absolutely terrific.

There's a hard turn coming up to the

left in a minute.

Right.

And about three, four, five hundred yards.

Whoa, someone's bit off.

These towns are so beautiful, and they love

these cars.

They love them.

We come in and we're absolute, we're gladiators

and heroes, you know.

We got halfway through it, and I suddenly

realised that we weren't going to make it.

And then we gassed it, and we had

the most outrageous race of all, and we

got in with one second to spare, and

he was 29 seconds late.

It is a very gruelling event for the

cars.

Any car, quite honestly, that can finish the

event has been very, very well put together.

We have problems with brakes because it's an

automatic car, and we have problems with the

shift gear because it doesn't want to shift

second.

Then, at the first service, they fixed it

where it was going into third, but not

into second.

So we were doing a little screwdriver action,

shifting it, and we've got to get that

fixed.

But after that, everything's going great.

The car is all stock.

The only thing we did was redo the

brakes.

It's so quiet, you can't even hear it

when it starts up.

We haven't done anything to it, and so

far it's running well.

We paid $400 for the car, and we

just want to make it through the race.

We had a serious problem with the suspension.

It could have been very dangerous.

And the awful thing was that I kept

saying to Nick, go on, get out of

the way, that Porsche has overtaken us.

I couldn't believe it, a Porsche was overtaking

us.

Over to the technical part.

Well, there's a link attached, the chassis is

attached to the axle, and it's broken in

half, basically.

You know, when you start, you can just

fortunately come to imagine just how difficult it's

going to be.

Difficult to imagine how difficult it's going to

be for these people to come.

The other side, in fact, is broken clean

in half.

Local garage just welded some angle iron on

the side of the thing.

Got them back on their own again.

We've got to do something just to try

and fix it.

It's all right, see?

Yeah, it'll look OK.

The top looks brilliant, but the underneath looks

like someone's been at it with a fucking

sledgehammer.

The other side broke in half, as I

said, which caused what's known as rear-wheel

steering.

In other words, the axle is steering about

like that and the wheel is up inside

the wheel arch and smashing about, which can

make life fairly dramatic.

They were doing about 130 or something at

the time.

As a driver, I've always had a mechanical

sympathy for what's going on.

I pick up sort of engine noises and

clunks and creaks so I can jump out

the car and say, well, it's doing this

or it's doing that, because I've heard things

that I don't like to hear.

These guys, they work.

They try and catch us up.

I mean, there are cars all over the

place being worked on all night, every single

night.

They're completely fucked.

Treated like shit.

They never get the right hotel room.

They just have a very hard time.

Straight.

For what?

I have no idea.

Why do you do it, Alan?

I hit that concrete post yesterday.

So we went about five miles out into

the countryside to meet this Mexican panel builder.

And we were up there.

Well, we were still there at 11 o

'clock at night.

We repaired all the panel damage.

And then we came in and had to

sort everything else out.

I like it myself, and I know it's

done the way I like it done.

The problem this evening is that the exhaust

has fallen off, that there's rear wheel wobble

on both sides.

Prop shaft's probably going out of balance.

So we're losing water.

We're using oil.

I am basically blagging bits off everybody inside

to try and keep going.

In fact, we're using Nick's dip oil and

Steve and Dave's engine oil.

And that's it.

But that's the great thing about this race,

is that all us lot are good mates

anyway.

And we're all having a good time, enjoying

ourselves.

And obviously, you don't deny anybody what they

want if you can help.

This race is totally ridiculous.

It's madness.

Basically, we have three types of section.

We have an in-and-out-of-the

-towns, a slow-speed transit section, probably averaging

only 30 miles an hour or something.

You then have a limited section, which is

on open roads, traffic and everything coming in

the other direction, which they also give you

a time for.

And then you have the real speed sections,

which are flat out on closed roads.

The police close the roads down and go

like a bat out of hell.

OK.

Pull out the corners, Dave.

No, I've got...

There's plenty of gravel on here, so be

careful.

OK.

Wait on this section there.

Come to the curve, and I thought I

hit something.

I need you to slow down.

There's a lot to get here.

I want to stay here.

OK, let's go.

We have an energising song.

And she plays the same one over and

over, so I put my song on, and

I played it, like, five times.

So all tomorrow we're playing the same song,

but my song.

No, my song.

Fabulous day.

Couldn't get any power up at altitude in

the earlier stages.

The car got a lot harder today than

yesterday because we were going around 140 miles

today.

In this race, what you really need is

especially brakes, suspension and cooling.

You really have to have the cooling system

real good.

I keep waiting to lose about 10 pounds

or something, but it hasn't worked yet.

I don't know what's wrong with it at

the moment.

All the hoses look new.

This brand-new engine.

Bought it out of the Ford dealer the

other night for $1,000.

The only thing, we ran over a dog.

We didn't want to, but we had to.

And then there were five horses in our

split section, so we had to slow down.

A lot of time.

But the second split section was a lot

faster.

And we're getting along pretty good now.

We're not fighting or anything.

Managed to pinch a bit of outgas at

lunchtime.

Aviation fuel, that is.

Add to the rather low-octane stuff you

get over here.

Seemed to make us fly this afternoon.

We were definitely motoring.

Don't know what speed we were doing, but

it was quite frightening.

Finally, we got nice views today, though, didn't

we, when we were broken down out there

in the middle of nowhere?

Yeah, you bet.

Seriously.

When did this race start, Steve?

I think it was 1950, with a bunch

of Americans.

Do you know, Nick?

Yeah, because the actual reason for having the

race, the ostensible reason for holding the race,

was to celebrate the opening of the Pan

-American Highway, or Mexico's part of it.

It started in 1950 with stock American cars.

But in 1951, word had got out that

there was this race.

There was the beginning of the foreign invasion

with Ferrari entering a couple of cars.

Racing right through the middle of those towns.

Those marks must have been pulling 175, 180

miles an hour.

And what it must have been like in

the 50s, in that respect, I have no

idea.

When you see some of the film of

the big cars heading through the streets, there's

no sense at all of any of them

thinking there's another 2,500 miles to run.

They're all going.

It's like it's a five-lapper.

By 1952, it was really turning into the

full invasion.

Sadie's won the race, with Carl Kling in

first place and Herman Lang in second.

Mercedes came in with a works team in

1952 with prototype 300SLs.

They took first and second places and the

European sports cars dominated from then till the

end in 1954.

They are ambassadors for the German vision and

for the German industry all over the world.

You'll find that the Spanish have an extra

page.

The Spanish page says, serious turn to the

right.

The Spanish says, gentle turn to the left.

Who were the main works teams in the

early 50s?

Which were the main factories that got involved

in this event?

By 1953, there were works teams from Mercedes,

Ferrari, Lancia, Porsche, even Old Formula and Cadillac,

all taking it very, very seriously.

As Nick said, all the greats, Fangio, Ascari,

Kling and Phil Hill did it as hard

guns, but also privateers like A.K. Miller

who drove his own car in the 50s

and in fact is doing it again this

year.

Speeds got faster and faster each year and

after the 54 race, there were so many

deaths and injuries that they just had to

stop the race.

There's an official car with a red flag.

That means trouble.

Evidently, someone has gone off the road here.

There's some skid marks and a part of

a car.

That's number one, Jack McAfee.

We checked and found that McAfee walked away

from this accident looking for assistance.

His co-pilot, Ford Robinson, was thrown from

the car and killed instantly.

His safety belt didn't hold.

Car number one, fatal accident number one.

On this leg, Chevrolet number 315 turned over.

The co-pilot died on the way to

the hospital.

The pilot, Mengi, was believed unhurt, though he

failed to report officially to the race committee.

It was certainly true that towards the end

of 54, the Mexican countryside was littered with

wrecks.

But luckily, it always ended with mercy.

Jean Berat, who was almost in the race,

was pulled out of a corner.

His car had to be pulled out of

a deep field gap.

As these things do, turn from a jolly

into a serious race and the cars are

certainly getting very, very fast.

Did they have backup, do you think?

Did you think they had big backup?

Yeah, they had Dakotas.

Really?

Aircraft, yeah.

Each team, the major teams, had a Dakota.

And they'd even carry fuel on the Dakotas.

God, amazing.

Well, up early in the morning, right?

Yeah.

Where are you lying?

In my bed.

You going to bed?

Well, it is half past three.

Play, play, play, play, play, play, play, play,

play, play, play, play, play, play, play, play,

play, play, play, play, play, play, play, play,

play, play, play, play, play, play, play, play,

play, play, play, play, play, play, play, play,

play, play, play, play, play, play, play, play,

play, play, play, play, play, play, play, play,

play, play, play, play, play, play, play, play,

play, play, play, play, play, play, play, play,

play, play, play, play, play, play, play, play,

play, play, play, play, play, play, play, play,

play, play, play, play, play, play, play, play,

play, play, play, play, play, play, play, play,

play, play, play, play, play, play, play

play,

play.

One step, and I'm totally blown And it

seems to take no time at all The

moon will show us the reason That life's

a life of lies The morning light won't

forget There'll be no sleep here tonight But

was it the idea of being in love?

Or was it the hand of fate That

seemed to fit just like a glove?

The road was met by sun, seas, and

snow Here grew a lady, neither one Wanted

to remain alone One step, and now the

whole thing's gone And it seems to take

no time at all The moon will show

us the reason That life's a life of

lies The morning light won't forget There'll be

no sleep here tonight Or

was it the idea of being in love?

The road was met by sun, seas, and

snow The moon will

show us the reason That life's a life

of lies The morning light won't forget The

steering has gone anyway The steering won't be

pulled out today This wheel steers, and that

wheel doesn't, you see The whole thing is

surreal Better tell the timers that we won't

be finishing this thing It locked up the

wheels and sent us over the cliff Right

outside of San Luis Potosí We rolled about

four times But parked it in the bottom

of the arroyo Feeling reasonably pleased with ourselves

And arrived to find that Steve and Dave

had gone over the edge We'd known nothing

about it at all There was no sign

on the road as we drove through They

went into a corner too far Either through

misreading the pace notes or whatever And basically

took off over the edge of a cliff

And landed, I think, upside down on a

small road below Dave is fine, maybe a

few cuts and bruises And Steve, a broken

leg The general feeling seems to be that

they're incredibly lucky To have got away so

lightly A terrific

event So many different territories The people are

terrific Fantastic One of the greatest races in

the history of motorsport I like the transits

when you've got to wait You get out,

we blast the stereo Start dancing in the

middle of the street All the buses are

coming by We're serving cookies Ours was like

the hospitality car So that was our chance

to party I think sometimes when we go

screaming through some village You think, if I

did this somewhere in England You just know

that the complaints It would just be impossible

Our people are really involved in racing And

you know the name of the Panamericana road

race It's gone through generations And young people

got to know the cars that used to

race in Mexico And that's a big achievement

They really enjoy those Mercedes and Alfas And

Porsches and Jaguars That are not really easy

to see in Mexico The race this year

was good It was a lot faster than

it's been previously The attrition rate was higher

The cars were better prepared They went faster,

they broke quicker We

have a more competitive race now And better

cars A lot more faster drivers And a

little bit more accidents There were probably 35

cars that didn't finish Only three teams of

girls The Carlsberg and Gladys Their car broke

down And Claudia and Mariella They finished And

their car broke a lot Yeah, and we're

the ones that made it That was the

best because you really got to meet all

the people Those little things of mezcal didn't

hurt either But we thought it was like,

what, gas avion?

But we were drinking anyway Like those Octane

boosters, they were really...

Man Something else I didn't know how much

work it was going to be Because usually

when I go through the races It's more,

you know, party, party, party But this time

you really did have to do a little

bit of work Do it again?

Oh yeah, definitely, in a minute We finished

8th overall Which I'm thrilled with Because there's

nothing ahead of us That we could really

have beaten I think that's the thing The

cars ahead are quicker Very well driven And

generally just producing more power So I'm thrilled

with that And I think we're 3rd or

4th in class Which is all I could

have asked for Do you think people who

really like to race Don't really race for

the prize?

There is a prize anyway What's it?

A few grand?

No, you get the choice of women at

the end of it, don't you?

Do you?

Yeah Well I wouldn't know I wouldn't This

thing is You know, Le Mans is a

Sunday afternoon picnic compared to this John Ward

came and he built a better car than

everybody else And it showed in the results