Free Limit, The by Michael Cannell

(Iron Horse), from a hodgepodge of parts. El Caballo had earned a folksy following among Mexican locals, who enjoyed seeing a homegrown car go up against contenders like Porfiro Rubirosa, a well-tanned dandy who wore a scarf, polo sweater, and kid gloves behind the wheel of his privately owned Ferrari. When the Mexican press mischievously invited him to pose for a photo in El Caballo, Rubirosa sniffed and waved them off. “Rubirosa wouldn’t even sit in El Caballo,” Miller said, “let alone have his picture taken.”
    Ten miles into the first leg, Miller saw Rubirosa’s Ferraripulled to the shoulder with a steaming radiator. As he shot past, he repaid Rubirosa’s hauteur by flipping him the finger.
    Within an hour another Ferrari fell out of the race. Jack McAfee steered into a tricky right-hand turn at 120 mph and slid sideways off the road, tumbled off a thirty-foot embankment, and rolled twice in the sagebrush. He suffered no more than a few bruises, but his navigator and close friend, Ford Robinson, broke his neck and died instantly. “No blood,” a Mexican bystander told a reporter. “A clean break of the neck.” McAfee swore he would never race again, but of course he did.
    Meanwhile, Hill, again joined by Ginther, thundered to the lead in the mountainous first leg from Tuxtla Gutiérrez to Oaxaca with an average speed of 94 mph—a record for the stage—with Maglioli riding his tail the whole way.
    By 10:40 the next morning a crowd had gathered in the hamlet of Atlixco to watch the first cars come in. The central square buzzed with anticipation: would Hill or Maglioli appear first? A loudspeaker crackled to life:
Carro a la vista, señores
(car in sight, gentlemen). Moments later the whine of a Ferrari revved to 7,000 rpm echoed off the adobe walls. Maglioli’s red car flashed down the main street, pirouetted through two 90-degree turns in the central square, and vanished in a swirl of dust. Three minutes later Hill appeared, his tailfin covered in soot. For reasons Hill could not understand, the crowd threw rocks at him as he slowed for the turns and sped off.
    Maglioli won the 252-mile run to Puebla by more than four minutes that morning, but Hill gained it back in the afternoon by driving like a madman down the short, down-plunging run to Mexico City. Hill knew his cumulative 45-second lead would not hold up when they left the mountains. Maglioli’s newerFerrari would outmuscle him on the featureless straights where forty miles could pass without a turn. Hill’s only hope was to stay close and hope for mishap.
    Sure enough, Maglioli ended the duel by gunning his Ferrari to 160 mph through the wide-open desert. He gained more than a three-minute advantage on the run to León, leaving Hill to follow his taillights in the fog. Maglioli padded his lead on the next day’s leg to Durango where the drivers stopped for a party on the set of a western called
Robber’s Roost.
Maglioli led by ten minutes after booming his way to Parral and Chihuahua over the next two days. Hill stood securely in second place, but his three-year-old Ferrari was running rough. “I’ll settle for second place,” he said in the high-walled enclosure where Ferrari bivouacked on the eve of the finish.
    The Juárez desert glowed with campfires that night. Hundreds camped out and five thousand more parked along the race’s final mile the next morning. The
policía
guarded the road, shooing cattle and spectators to the shoulder. A dozen private planes flew over the desert looking for the finishers. By 11:40 a.m. a tiny dust cloud gathered on the southern horizon. The two cars appeared as distant specks, followed by a loudening howl. Maglioli took the checkered flag at 134 mph, three seconds ahead of Hill. Both finishes were concealed in clouds of dust.
    â€œRoad racers are like roulette players,” Maglioli told the press a few minutes later. “We