The Huye Memorial Cup

Hi Everyone! It’s been a while since my last entry, but I have been very busy this past week preparing for my first real entry into the car racing world. Martin is a member of the Rwanda Automobile Club and competes in various car rallies across the country. His co-pilot used to be his girlfriend Caroline, but she has had to stop when she learned she was pregnant. In their last rally together they made a mistake and the car did three flips before crashing down a mountain, not too safe for a baby.
So Martin was looking for a new co-pilot and when I saw his race suit and started bragging that my step-dad and cousin were also into racing, he knew he was going to drag me in as his new teammate.
At first I was kinda apprehensive about the whole ordeal, since I usually get carsick and was kinda scared of killing myself in the middle of Africa. But the idea of getting myself into another crazy adventure, making Michel proud (and my mom not so much), and competing was enough to convince me.
So last weekend we drove down to Butare (now called Huye), a city two and a half hours away, to do the “reconnaissance”. The whole idea here is to know the tracks well and note every single turn so that on race day, we could whip through as fast as possible. The job of the co-pilot is to tell the pilot exactly what is coming up. Is the next turn a 90 Left, a jump on 120 Right or a Long U 90 Left? It is crucial to give the driver the right instructions so that he can properly gage his speed and not fly off a cliff or into a ditch. In order to get the most precise notes possible, we used a GPS to know exactly what kilometre we were at and took down many “repères” such as a house with a blue door or a banana plantation. Anyways, all was not so well that weekend. I was taking down the notes that Caro and Martin were telling me, but it didn’t take long for me to get car sick. I basically felt like puking the whole day. We decided to sleep there at night to practice more, esoecially the one we would have to do at night. My notes also ended up being really bad cause I was too sick to focus and Caro had to redo them all.
After the reconnaissance weekend, I spent every single weeknight at Martin’s house typing up the notes with Caro or at the garage with Martin setting up the car. I also had to practice changing a tire in less than 3 minutes, and learn all the logistics of the rally. That week was incredibly tiring and I wondered if I had gotten more than I bargained for.
Finally, Saturday morning arrived, and there was no turning back, I got all suited up in my anti-fire suit and left for Butare.
There were 11 cars racing in all. Our car, a Subaru Impreza, was about the 5th or 6th best car and Martin was about 6th in the ranking since he had not finished the last two races and got no points. We were also the young rookies of the gang. One pilot had been racing for more than 25 years, and another had been the co-pilot for the Champion of Africa before becoming a pilot himself. After the first 26 Km leg of the race we were 4rh. Martin went slower than he could have gone because he needed to build trust in me and I was not complaining. On the way back of the same track, we beat our time by 30 seconds which is huge. However, we remained 3rd. When we got out of the car for a 20 minute service time, I felt like puking so I took some gravol. Then we did the 46 km track, I was scared about this one because I did not know it well, it was long and I was scared we would take a wrong turn at one of the many intersections. However it went really well and luckily two of our competitors ran into car troubles so we fell into 2nd place. The night trail was a short 13 km one, but very fast and fun. We did average time there, but managed to keep our position. The next day we did rhe 46 km one twice. The athmosphere of a car rally is really fun. There are a lot of people all around the track cheering us on and loads of kids everywhere that come up to you just to shake your hand and touch your car. It made you feel like a professional athlete with lots of fans. Some people drove from Burundi just to see the rally. Anyways on the second day the plan was simple: drive conservative so as to not get a flat tire or break anything major. If we had to stop we would lose at least 3 minutes and lose our lead.

The first time around went really well and we still stood in 2nd position, with the 3rd place guy about 2.5 minutes behind. All we needed to do was get through the track again without breaking anything. But at about the 20 km mark, I heard Martin say he thought we had a flat tire. But we decided to keep driving anyways. However, there was at least 15 km left when I heard this screeching noise and realized we had no more tire in the back driver side. We were driving on the metal part of the wheel! If we stopped, we would lose our place so we slowed down considerably but drove on. Every 100 meters Martin was yelling “HOW MANY KM LEFT TO GO?!!!” It was getting really hard to control the car, especially in the curves. But we manage to make it past the finish line. However it wasn’t over yet. We still had a 10 minute liaison through the city to get back to the service area. If we did not make it in the allocated time, we would get penalized. Our plan was to stop, take 3 minutes to change our tire and then take 7 minutes to get back. We jumped out of the car and got everything out but realized the place to insert the “crick” had been broken so we could not change the tire! We got back in the car and drove through the town on 3 wheels honking like mad so people would get out of the way and we could make it back on time. And guess what?! We made it!!! Even though our time was 1m34seconds slower we maintained our 2nd place!!! At the ceremony we each got a huge trophy and I even received flowers since I was one of the 3 ladies taking part in the rally!
Overall, I had a great time, but best of all was getting to meet all the fellow drivers and co-pilots with whom we had a blast and partied with all through the weekend.