Our mirrors were jammed full of their compadres, maybe six of them in line abreast astern of us, red and blue lights flashing. And the true beauty of it all, besides that heartfelt enthusiasm and encouragement, and the breathtaking scenery slamming past our windows, was that every single damn thing we were doing was not just absolutely legal, but positively encouraged by the Feds.
When was the last time you did that? Forget the pale shadow of the revived Mille Miglia, or the Cannonball Runs. The current race, revived in , may not be the flat-out, widow-maker that it was in its heyday in the Fifties, when drivers of the calibre of Juan Manuel Fangio, Alberto Ascari, Piero Taruffi, Phil Hill, Bill Vukovich, Troy Rutmann and Mickey Thompson flat-footed giant chrome-festooned American saloons or dinky little Italian racing barchettas over the superfast yet brutally unforgiving highway that newly linked Alaska with Mexico.
There is going to be no better place to appreciate and understand just what the Carrera Panamericana means than to be right there at the heart of it. I feel quietly jazzed. Especially when you live it among people who regularly challenge themselves every fortnight in front of a critical and often brutally judgemental world all too ready to see and record only their mistakes.
I admit that immediately to Mario. But it gets better than that. We swap over so I can do some road section driving, then we come across all the other cars parked up. And so I find myself pushing a little green Mini to my limits, not just on this stage but the next three, between Oaxaca and Nochixtian, Nochixtian and Tamazulapan and then Tamazulapan and Huajuapan de Leon.
Of course the Mini understeers, with its front-wheel drive. You push as far as you can steer, then you back off when the initial grip subsides and hold it on that edge as your final line. The little car really does have masses of grip. So much so that it forgives your myriad mistakes, holds your hand in your seemingly erratic progress from corner to changing corner.
