Excitement builds as preparations continue in Mexico

Final preparations for Rally Guanajuato Mexico are in full swing with crews completing reconnaissance and teams carrying out last-minute checks on their cars in the indoor service park in Leon ahead of Thursday’s shakedown.

As with all flyaway rounds of the world championship, teams place a great reliance upon freight companies, sea carriers and airlines getting their cars and equipment to the events on time.

Ken Rees, the boss of the Petter Solberg World Rally Team, said his only concern was the fear of his mechanics suffering from jetlag after his team’s Citroen DS3 WRC arrived by air freight on Saturday afternoon.

“The sea container arrived on Friday and the car got here Saturday so we’ve really had no problems at all, which is historically the case on this rally,” said Rees. “With the six-hour time difference to mainland Europe jetlag does begin to affect the boys after the first few days and you do tend to see people wondering around the hotels at 4am waiting for their alarm clocks to go off at 7am. But we are used to it and with the days not starting until around 8am it’s not too bad, quite a sociable rally in fact.”

John Millington, the co-ordinator of the factory Ford Abu Dhabi World Rally Team said not even a delayed flight had affected his squad’s preparations.

“The first three cars arrived on Sunday and the next three got here on Monday,” said Millington, who is responsible for overseeing the safe arrival of 140 tonnes of sea freight and 28 tonnes of air freight. “They were a little bit late but it wasn’t really a problem,”he added.

The Ford team and the semi-works FERM, Monster, Munchi’s and Stobart operations consist of a combined 114 members and getting them to each round of the championship creates a considerable logistical challenge. “Everyone’s got here on time, which is good considering there are a lot of people to bring over,” said Millington.

Shakedown for Priority 1 and Priority 2 drivers starts at 08:00hrs local time on Thursday 3 March.

The first competitive action gets underway at 20:06hrs on Thursday with the 1.05-kilometre Guanajuato Street Stage.