Rally Guanajuato Mexico / Rally review
Not a lot of competitors in Mexico, but the fans make up for that. They are out in
force and always show their enthusiasm for the sport.
23/42
The teams
Unfortunately Mexico has another tradition and
that is the number of competitors. This year there
were just 29 teams on the entry list. Of course
all manufacturer’s teams were present. Hyundai
had selected Chris Atkinson as second driver this
time. In the M-Sport tents we also saw local hero
Benito Guerra. Every year he tries to get sufficient funds to start here and this year he selected
M-Sports’ Fiesta WRC as his weapon.
Also in Fiesta’s were of course Robert Kubica for
the RK-M-Sport WRT and Martin Prokop in his
Jipocar Czech National Team car. Eight teams
were competing in WRC 2, including Yuri Protasov, provisional leader in the championship,
Chris Atkinson made his return to the WRC in his first outing for Hyundai.
and Ott Tanak, who started his WRC 2 season in
Mexico. The rest of the entry list consisted of a
handful of local and regional drivers. But for the
championship this small number doesn’t matter
and the fans don’t seem to bother either. Mexican fans are always there in abundance. They
line the dusty roads in their most colourful outfits.
Happy
This really has its effect on the drivers and teams.
They all seem to be happy and don’t seem to
mind to wear sombrero’s or other paraphernalia
and get photographed. This is simply the most
colourful and joyful event of the season. Perhaps
the fact that the sun is there again after the European winter has something to do with it too.
The stages
But then the stages, they are something completely different. Before we move into the countryside and up the mountains. We first have the
Monster Street Stage Guanajuato. It runs through
the narrow streets and tunnels built by silver miners in the seventeenth century. This made the
town into a Unesco World Heritage Site.
The famous saying: ‘You can’t win here but you
can lose a lot’, definitely applies to this stage. It’s
only just one kilometre long but the roads all have
very nasty curbs that can break your wheels and
the walls of the tunnels do stop you if you get off
the driving line, but they do that in a way that usually makes continuing the rally quite a challenge.