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