1951
The following year, the race was run from south to north, starting in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas and finishing in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua because of the lack of accommodation available for race officials, drivers, crews and press in El Ocotal and the jungle. This northerly direction also allowed the U.S. drivers to finish at their border. For the first time, a European manufacturer entered a 'factory' team, Ferrari entering several cars including a 212 Export LWB Vignale, and although these did not technically satisfy the requirements of the touring car category, the Italians were permitted to compete anyway.
The race would prove to exact a heavy toll upon drivers. At the start of the race, José Estrada, a prosperous Mexico City car dealer and a veteran racer, announced: "I will win, or die trying." On the first stage, his 1951 Packard skidded off the road and tumbled 630 feet (190 m) down into a ravine. Both Estrada and co-driver Miguel González died in a Oaxaca hospital later that afternoon. The next day claimed Carlos Panini, Italian in origin, and a pioneer of Mexican aviation - in 1927 he had established Mexico's first scheduled airline, which he sold in 1951 with plans for his retirement. He is credited with being the first pilot to fly a light plane around the world. The fatal accident occurred on the second day, during the second stage from Oaxaca to Puebla. Although the registered driver for the race was Carlos' daughter Teresa, he was at the wheel of car, despite not having a valid license and being in poor health. The accident happened while a young Bobby Unser was trying to overtake Panini, as Unser related in his book "Winners Are Driven: A Champion's Guide to Success in Business & Life":
| “ | On the second day, we were in seventeenth and coming up to pass the car of millionaire Carlos Panini and his daughter, Terresita. She was the registered driver. However, Carlos was behind the wheel instead and was in ill-health. He shouldn't have been driving. He didn't even have a driver's license. The rules were that the slower car was to allow the faster car to pass if the faster car honked its horn. We were in the mountains, and I came up to Carlos and honked, but he wouldn't let me pass. This went on through about ten turns, with Carlos blocking me each time. We were probably doing about 90 miles per hour at this point. The next time I tried to pass him, he bumped my right-front fender, which almost pushed me off a sheer cliff to the left that was some 500 to 800 feet down. My left front tire went over the edge, but fortunately I regained control of the car. Carlos over-corrected his car to the right, and went straight into a solid rock wall. The car exploded on impact like an egg hitting a sidewalk. I didn't know it at the time, but Carlos was killed instantly.
One of the rules of the race was if you stopped to help anyone, you were automatically disqualified... Seeing the explosive impact, I wanted to stop to help, but daddy told me to keep going. He knew the rules and told me that people were there to help. That was hard for me - I slowed down to about 15 or 20 miles per hour. He insisted that I keep going, and grimly, I did. |
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Unser managed to control his Jaguar, while Panini's 1949 Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 SS collided with the cliff face. Ricardo Ramírez of Mexico City abandoned the race to rush the Paninis to a hospital in Puebla, but he was announced dead on arrival. Teresa Panini survived the accident with minor injuries. The deaths of two well-known Mexican sportsmen in the first two days of the race brought some reactions of horror and indignation. A government official publicly branded the race "an imitation of North American customs not suited to Mexican characteristics." The press went off on a crusade; Mexico City's El Universal declared that permitting such dangerous shenanigans was a "crime."
Although the first two places were predictably won by the works Ferraris (driven by Piero Taruffi and Alberto Ascari respectively), third and fourth places were won by ordinary American cars. Bill Stirling, a salesman from El Paso, Texas, won third place in a Chrysler Saratoga and well-known race car driver Troy Ruttman won fourth in a flat-head Mercury which he reportedly had bought for $1,000 in a used car lot in El Monte, California. In spite of this he was able to defeat several of the factory Lancias and Ferraris.
Read more about this topic: Carrera Panamericana