Achieving an ambitious goal got closer in 2007, which started by surprising us with the early, and highly unexpected, victory of a Mexican in the Daytona 24 Hours. But behind this triumph there’s solid work of discovery and consolidation of natural talents encompassing almost a decade.

After Pedro Rodríguez’s death in 1971, Mexican motor sport fell into a hole aided by our governments’ economic policies, it is probably the most expensive sport and its cost grew in a similar proportion to the peso’s devaluation. The situation got worse with sponsors leaving the sport and a whole generation of drivers was lost, although some highly personal efforts kept the tradition afloat: Rebaque, Josele, López Rocha, Adrián…

By the end of last century, Carlos Slim Domit, a fan since he used to oversee operations of Cigatam’s support to the Formula K, and multichampion Jimmy Morales, founded the Escudería Telmex (ET) to support new talents with a non-stated objective of getting a Mexican driver in F1 before the end of the first decade of this century. After competing in many single-seater formulas -Indy Lights, Atlantic, Champ Car, F Ford, F3, A1GP, F BMW and, now, the World Series- and employing dozens of drivers, Salvador Durán (21 years), the winner at Daytona, is the diamond in the rough leading the team in its, ever closer, search for achieving the goal.

In parallel, the Escudería has built a national team which provides them with drivers for stock car series, with the stated goal of sending a Mexican to NASCAR, where we had presence since 1959 with the Rodríguez brothers. The team has been very successful and asides from sending drivers to race in the preliminary US stock series, it gives them a foundation to offer racers for other teams, such as FitzContreras, which has been nurtured with ET formed talent.

It is a project which has started to achieve success with drivers that have won internationally, earned championships and, above all, reminds us that Mexican motor sport has a winning heritage. It also has left a few drivers aside, the ones who didn’t quite cut the mustard, as any enterprise will; but the achievement of waking a sleeping giant is nothing short of admirable, more since it is fuelled by genuine liking for the sport and not as result of a slick marketing operation.

Now, the table is set for someone else to do something similar in our tennis, which used to have a good reputation in the courts of the world three decades ago with Raúl Ramírez. And there are many other sports we can think of too.
© CEJV/SHRAC 2007