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Sams Valley racer navigates Porsche to Panamericana win By JOHN DARLING for the Mail Tribune On his fourth try, Sams Valley road warrior Forrest Hatch emerged a winner in the zany and dangerous La Carrera Panamericana - a seven-day, 1,800-mile dash across Mexico in 1950s and '60s cars with powerful engines dropped into them. Hatch and retired world champion rally driver Scott Harvey won in Historic-Class A, which means 4-cylinder cars built before 1966. Driving a 1965 Porsche 912, they finished 5 minutes and 13 seconds ahead of the competition in an "intense chase" from Tuxtla Gutierrez, near the Guatemala border, to Nuevo Laredo, at the Texas border. The race finished Nov. 2. "It was extremely intense emotionally," Hatch said, "because we were running up front the whole way and being chased by some pretty good cars - guys with unlimited bucks to spend on car and crew." The grand prize is bragging rights for a year, he said, and a souped-up, long-block racing engine. With speeds up to 180 mph beside cliffs, over mountain passes and through countless hairpin curves, fatalities among drivers and spectators are not uncommon, Hatch said, but fortunately none occurred this year. Cars Hatch had driven in earlier Panamericanas - a 1951 Studebaker and a 1954 Chrysler - were both totaled when they missed curves and rolled down cliffs. Strict requirements for full roll cages prevent most injuries among drivers, and Mexican police clear roads of all non-race traffic. Hatch, a driver in previous races, served this time mainly as navigator, reading from a detailed course book and barking out coming turns and shifts. The team had few problems to slow them down - just some carburetor trouble and a missed turn. Hatch, 64, a General Electric retiree, devotes long hours to restoration of classic cars, including doing all engine, body and upholstery work himself. His collection of 15 cars includes a showroom-red 390 horsepower V-12 1985 Ferrari Testarossa, one of only 200 in the nation, and a silver 1956 Spyder reproduction model, identical to the one in which actor James Dean was killed. Then there are five Porsches, including a 356, 914, 944, 911 and 928, a 1967 Datsun 1600, a 1998 Corvette, a 1934 and 1937 Austin 7 and - perhaps the most thrilling to drive, he said - a small but hot Emmick Racing Kart. In earlier Panamericanas, Hatch has gone off cliffs, crashed into a phone pole, ripped the whole side of his car and been rear-ended by a TV truck broadcasting the event. "Every year I say this might be my last time. I know I've stretched my luck to the limit. But when next fall comes around, well, we'll see." John Darling is a free-lance writer living in Ashland. E-mail him at [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.