About 20 years ago, I held a passport in my hand and put my feet on foreign soil for the first time. A friend of mine who was living in Los Angeles came to pick me up at the airport. It was quite a drive from the airport to downtown LA, as I appreciate the view on the side of the road, I was going over the plot of the then hit TV show A Native of Beijing in New York in my mind, picturing myself being dumped into a basement with only 20 dollars. As the city neon faded away, it looked more and more like a suburban area, and the car got faster and faster. I remember enjoying the feeling of sitting in a car cruising down the road, because at that time I had only managed to own my first car - an Alto - and I still could not truly understand what it represents. I tried to find the handle to wind the window down, but I couldn't find it. My friend saw me trying and asked if I wanted some fresh air. I nodded. He pressed a button and the window on my side dropped automatically. As the evening breeze flowing into the car, I smiled at him and asked him, ‘what car is this?' He said, ‘a BMW, 320.' And that was my first-ever ride in a BMW. There were two things on my mind, one was why the dash is so tilted towards the driver that I almost had to lean over to take a look, and the second thing was, it must feel way better in the driver's seat than in the passenger's.

My friend dropped me off at his vacation house outside the town and we made a plan to go to Mexico in three days. He said since I had a US visa I wouldn't need a visa to go to Mexico, and he would take me to eat spicy grilled shrimps.

Three days passed by, we went to Mexico indeed. The spicy grilled shrimps which were much spicier than the Chongqing hotpot, the cactuses that were everywhere, and the colorful sombreros were all very impressive. But I never knew it would take 20 years for me to see Mexico again.

Today, it's already 2015 when I set foot on to this cactus-filled country again, and I'm driving a BMW 3-series to watch the WRC. And this is actually my second time watching the real WRC, more than a decade after first watching it in my hometown Beijing and then later on competing in the race myself. Time flies, and I've got grey hairs growing.

WRC stands for World Rally Championship, it has 13 rallies around the world this year, and Rally Mexico is the 3rd rally for the 2015 season.

Since Volkswagen gave up the Dakar Rally and made a turnaround into WRC, and the nine-time French champion Loeb switched to WTCC, now WRC is owned by Ogier. Ogier won Rally Mexico in both 2013 and 2014, he have also won the first two rallies this year, so if he wins this time, he can probably do a hat trick with the sombreros.

Breathing the dust from the roaring racing cars in a cactus bush, as a racing driver, I think I have the ultimate desire for the WRC and the utmost awe for the use-to-be splendid Group B racing. Of course, this is my second race track visit and my second stop of my journey around the world on a race track in 400 days, after the Dakar Rally in South America back in January. This is also a very important item on my race track bucket list.

Rally Mexico features a very challenging hot gravel track. The race track sits almost 2,800 meters above sea level, even the lowest point is still over 1,800 meters above sea level. The thin air would reduce the engine power by at least 20%, the throttle response, the power output, and the accelerating are all slowed down. Rally Mexico has 21 stages, most of them are over 30km, with the longest stage at 55km. The drivers need to drive back and forth between León and Guanajuato. These super-long stages will put the drivers and the tires to a brutal test.

Compared to the WRC, the rally racings in China are much shorter. Usually there will be a pit stop scheduled after two special stages. In order to introduce rallying to more audience, WRC put in a street racing or a super-short stage after three special stages, so the TV broadcasting is easier, and those racing fans who cannot go to the mountains and watch the rally in person can enjoy the racing as well.

Sure enough, if you cannot go to the race track and have personal encounters with the racing cars, you cannot call yourself a professional racing enthusiast. So first, let's get the stage maps like a special agent. You need to find this secret file from the official website of the WRC, like here for the electronic map of Rally Mexico:

http://www.rallymexico.com/spectators/documents

You can use Google Earth to open the data file with the .kmz extension, but note that these data cannot be imported into GPS. To properly import these data into a GPS so you can navigate to the race tracks in the mountains, you need to open the file with Google Earth, save it as another file with a .kml extension. Then download a software called GPS-TrackMaker, use it to open the .kml file, save it as another file again with an extension of .gpx, then it will be ready to be uploaded to your GPS. This all sound very complicated, but it does give you the feeling of being a special agent like the 007 - so you better be doing all of this work in a pitch dark room. Download the data, convert, upload it to your GPS, throw gas all over the room, kick the door shut, toss a burning copy of the Ramp magazine through the window, then get in your car and drive away watching the burning room from the rearview mirror, step heavily on the accelerator, and all the way to the special stages.

Han Yue

March 2015

From Mexico