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Speedway Championship of Argentina - Round Three
THE 44th INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY CHAMPIONSHIP OF ARGENTINA
Round Three, Sunday January 3, 1999
From: Chris Hesmer (Canadian Chris Hesmer competes and reports the Championship)
* * Round One - Round 2 -
Round 3 - Round 4 * *
Ola!, from the country of one ply bathroom tissue, for once again, another
report from the hotbed of winter speedway. The third round was completed
on Sunday January 3, 1999. This week, the once beautiful smooth speedway
racing surface, turned to your muddy, deep inconsistent, rutted, slow,
speedway/motocross type of terrain of what you might call a racing surface.
In fact it proved to be very dangerous night of racing, for the largest
crowd yet in attendance. There was 2300 paid spectators, plus free children,
plus people in the pits, and don't forget the out of bounds tree sitters and
the fence hoppers. Needless to say, this facility was pushing 5000
personnas. See, my Spanish is getting better. Being in a strange world,
where no one speaks the same language as you, proves to still be a difficult
task. By the third week, I am still learning their racing rules,
regulations, and manipulation of the race program. While this has been
problems for me in the past, I hope to have this sorted out by end of my
stay.
Some of the interesting rules that brought me to my doom the last few
weeks are not common of Speedway racing in Canada. For example, even if the
wind blows the tape into your tire and the referee sees, you can say adios
till next time as instead of heading for the penalty line, your heading for
the pits, and possibly home.
The next is the what I call the soccer rule. Of course with soccer being
big in this country you could expect similar rules in speedway couldn't you?
Well how about the yellow card, red card - hit the showers rule. Yes, the
exact same as soccer.
The next is the one that killed me this week. With qualifying very well
behind Armando Castagna in my first qualifying heat, I got a buy directly to
the semi-final rounds. Somehow, up against a very fast Castagna again I
realized I could not catch him on this race surface, and thus did what the
intelligent racer does. Watching the preceding races, two riders hooked up
big time and wheeled into the boards at some horrifying speeds, one of them
being Simone Terenzani of Italy. A dozen others who realized they were in
trouble opted for the low side and wiped their brow. Thus, in the good
position of second in the semi-final, I looked behind to what seemed to be a
comfortable enough advantage over the other four semi-finalists. Opting for
the checker instead of the pine in turns 1,2,3, and 4; I turned it down a
notch to hold my transfer position. Transfer position a second place is
not. After, confused why I was demoted to the Consolation Final, I was able
to find out the next day. It seems that everyone is timed by some hombre up
in the tower using the chronograph on their watch. Positions for some
reason have no meaning in Argentine speedway. The time of your complete
four lap race,( with a statistical standard error of plus or minus a second
or two) is what determines if you go to the final or not. It seems after
the comparison of two men and their thumb speed that I missed making the
final by a few hundreds of a second or something. Oh well, what can you
say, it is this countries rules and I have six more weeks to adapt. I just
hope I am able to find out some more fubar rules before they nip me in the
butt, then take me a day to find out through translation what kind of rule
it is.
On to the final, Armando Castagna once again took command and left the
others in his dust, or should I say mud rut. This catapulted Castagna into
the championship points lead with his win last week as well. The spectators
of course went crazy like they do for their favorite soccer team, and the
atmosphere is electric. The results of the top three in the Grande Finale
are once again as follows:
Pos. No. Rider Place
1 38 Armando Castagna Italy
2 40 Poty Sanchez Buenos Aires
3 1 Luis Vallejos Bahia Blanca
Watch for next week, where I'll manage to get a hold of the series points
breakdown for all competitors.
Until then, keep the rubber side down or the snow out your driveway, and
keep sending those nice emails to gsahagun@impsat1.com .
Chow.
Chris Hesmer
1998 Canadian Speedway Champion.
E-mail in Argentina in care of: gsahagun@impsat1.com.ar
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