Limit, The by Michael Cannell

Díaz, had died after driving his Jaguar XK120 into a bridge parapet. Nor did they heed the urgings of soldiers standing by with fixed bayonets. The throng parted reluctantly as the cars inched forward, escorted by motorcycle police. Young men ran alongside drumming on the hoods. Hill spent the night pounding dents out of the car body and fixing its leaking radiator.
    The pace quickened with the mountains behind them. Over the next four days the drivers crossed broad parched plains as they pushed on to León, Durango, Parral, and Chihuahua. Hill had by now found the right tire pressure and fuel load, and he managed to stay just behind the lead pack where Ferraris and Mercedes fought. On the second to last day it looked as if he might move up a notch by overtaking Jack McAfee ofManhattan Beach, California, who was slowing as he struggled to see through a cracked windshield. Just as Hill caught up, McAfee’s windshield shattered. His sight restored, McAfee pulled away.
    Meanwhile Kling, in a Mercedes Gullwing, went all out to catch Bracco, who led the race in a Ferrari. The final run was treacherous with sand blowing across the road, but Kling managed to erase an eight-minute deficit with a blistering desert sprint to win the Carrera. A crowd of Mexicans and Americans watched him nose ahead at a finish line set up at the Ciudad Juárez airport, across the Rio Grande from El Paso.
    Mercedes had toppled the indomitable Ferrari team with obsessive planning and the renewed muscle of German engineering. Over the five-day race Kling averaged more than 100 mph. “We were so fast on some of the stages that even in a chartered DC-3 our director of motorsport, Alfred Neubauer, couldn’t keep up,” Kling said after the race.
    Neubauer stood at the finish line in a suit and trench coat, smoking cigarettes and bear hugging his drivers. The Carrera was Mercedes’ first win in the Western Hemisphere and an important step for a company fighting its way back to the top after the devastation of war.
    With his suspension nearly gone, Hill thudded his way to a sixth-place finish, earning $581. It was a striking rookie showing, particularly for a driver too unnerved to eat solid foods. His Ferrari was pockmarked from flying stones. Patches of paint were sandblasted off, leaving bare metal shining through. Bits of animal stuck out from the radiator grille. Hill stepped from the car, wind-beaten and dust-covered. Snowflakes had fallen on the high desert earlier that morning. A handful ofdrivers drank whiskey with Mexican blankets draped over their shoulders. They posed for pictures with a woman bullfighter. Strangers pounded them on the back. Photographers pressed in for portraits.
    Hill had reason to smile as he shivered in the desert chill. For promising young drivers, a show of toughness counted as much as a win. Hill had proven his resilience with a gutty five-day run over some of the worst roads in the world. “If ever there was a racing event in which I felt I had countless times been close to wiping myself out, it was the Carrera,” he said.
    He had shown that he was capable of exceptional mettle. If he could conquer his nerves, or at least control them, he might drive his way into the foreign circles that had enchanted him from childhood—and that he had glimpsed firsthand in Mexico.
    When the 1953 season got under way a few months later, Hill went back to campaigning in regional circuits—Carrell Gardens and Pebble Beach in California, Sebring in Florida, the Phoenix Raceway in Arizona. He still saw himself as a misfit, and his tour did nothing to dissuade him. Americans viewed sports car drivers as suspect athletes engaged in a bastard sport, like surfers or bull riders. He celebrated his wins with lukewarm beers sipped by motel swimming pools, or with nothing at all. His disparaged standing seemed to corroborate his father’s view that racing was a waste of time, a dropout’s last resort.