They say you should never go back to your ex. Yet that is exactly what happened to me last Dec. 1, in Pampanga. In my defense, though, I was tricked. Duped. Lied to, actually.
It all started with a phone call from the Colombian Drag Lord and chief engineer at Autoplus, Pacho Blanco, who also happens to be a long-time friend and co-host of our weekly podcast Counterflow. He invited me to race for his team as he was fielding two cars in the six-hour endurance cup in Clark International Speedway.
The first thing I asked, of course, was what car we were driving. He told me it was an LXi race car. I don’t think he finished the sentence when I cut in like a rev limiter with an immediate and resounding “Yes!â€
When I turned up at the track, however, the only LXi Civics I saw had other people’s names on it. I did notice my old 92 Gli Corolla parked nearby, which I had sold to Pacho several years ago and I even made a joke about how Pacho should enter that in the race and register it as a moving chicane. But nobody laughed. Yet.
Only when I looked closer and noticed that all the seats had been stripped out did it start to dawn on me that the punchline in all this was me. In his thick Colmbian accent, Pacho started explaining to me in a tone you speak to a large animal with when you are trying to convince it that you are not food, that the LXi fell through and yes, this was not only Plan B, but Oplan LPG. But more on that in a bit.
You see, you have to understand the back story here to know why the idea of racing this car was just ridiculous. Firstly, when I sold this car to Pacho several years ago, it had well over 250,000 kilometers on the dial. Since then, it would have easily clocked up another 100,000 or so. We don’t know, because the odometer stopped working. And we’re not talking normal kilometers here; these are the hard-earned, family taxi, work vehicle, I-can’t-afford-an-oil-change-type kilometers. I call them dog miles, because the car ages seven times faster.
Secondly, it had a poorly fitted LPG kit that was giving me all sorts of problems because the company that installed it had ceased operations and couldn’t provide the software for retuning it. The car had also been shot at and still has a bullet lodged in the A-pillar. It was so abused that before I sold it, I asked Pacho to go through the entire car and fix anything needed so that I could sell it in good conscience. I also asked a priest to do the same thing. He had the car for several days, gave me a report and then offered to buy it from me. I can’t remember the exact figure, but he was suggesting that I be the one to pay him.
To cut a long story short, Pacho now owns the car. He kept the LPG tank but installed a Zavoli kit of Xoom AutoGaz. He tuned it himself to run smoothly on LPG and continues to use it as his daily driver.
Now, I would normally be upset if a close friend lied to me, especially someone as religious and upright as Pacho. But the reason for all this trickery was that Pacho wanted to prove a point. And he sure as hell knew that he would have never had the opportunity to do that had I been presented with the facts.
So, there I was with a race suit, gloves, helmets, and boots staring at this stove on wheels. Reluctantly, I climbed in. My team mate, Paolo Mantolino, qualified the car in 10th and I did the first stint. I figured I would just go through the motions and get some track time. Anyway, I would probably overheat in the first five laps. At least I could leave saying I did my bit. In the opening laps, however, I managed to overtake the TRS Ford Fiesta race car that I had also been invited to drive in this year’s enduro. Then a Sentra. A few laps later, a Civic.
Aside from the woeful brakes and a second gear that you needed to double clutch four times before it would engage, the car was running really, really well. Sure it looked like I was trying to stomp out a fire with my left foot every time I downshifted, but the acceleration was actually impressive. Very impressive.
I finished 32 laps before pitting for gas. Turns out I could have stayed out another 15-20, but I didn’t know how much reserve there was. In fact, Pacho was able to do 50 laps on a 48-liter tank in the other Corolla Xoom LPG car he fielded. That means his consumption was somewhere around 4.5 kilometers to the liter—at racing speeds.
By my second stint, even with brakes that should have come with a recorded message saying “The subscriber cannot be reached,†I was actually looking forward to driving. The car felt better than I have ever known it to be. I even pulled a 2:33 lap time which is several seconds faster than division 3 PTCC (Philippine Touring Car Championship) cars and flirting with the division 2 cars.
And by the fourth hour of racing, Pacho was on the pit wall gesticulating like a mad man saying I was running first in our class. I thought it was just a sick way to keep me motivated, but as I pitted in for gas at about the 5-hour mark and handed over the wheel to my co-driver to bring it home, we were indeed running 1st and 2nd in the 100-horsepower category.
Sadly, however, after 20 minutes or so, a 30-peso relay switch ended our dream. Pacho, however, took the last stint in the second Xoom LPG Corolla and continued to lead the race. That was until the EK hatch of JV Colayco, Stefan Ramirez and Raffy David started catching up. They had had some overheating issues but were now running about six seconds faster than Pacho.
We did the math and it was only a matter of time before Pacho would be taken. It was like watching a cow being brought to slaughter. Heart-breaking. And sure enough, the inevitable happened and Pacho was passed for the lead somewhere towards the last 15 minutes of the race.
But as sad as it was, all we wanted to do was finish. And second wasn’t too bad. That was until we saw Pacho actually closing the gap. We almost thought Stefan was just cooling off because he had a comfortable gap, but as they approached the last sequence of corners, Pacho ended up on his bumper.
With half our bodies hanging outside the pitwall screaming like soccer hooligans, we saw Pacho pass the EK hatch of Stefan on the last corner of the last lap to take first place by a headlight. It was such a Hollywood finish that even Stefan’s team mates high-fived us.
You couldn’t write a script for it, but in the end, thanks to folks like Xoom AutoGaz, Zavoli LPG kit, FMC LPG Tanks, SeaOil, JLM Valve saver, Clean Fuel, Rota Wheels, LiquiGaz, Reiden Royce Productions, Visual Speed Autosig, MJ Autoshop, Cary’s Autoteknik and BRE Blanco Race Engineering, we proved a point. Never go back to your ex.