The altitude, high temperatures, an unknown circuit and a chassis still in development are the challenges awaiting Ricardo in Mexico City, which is where he headed for on Tuesday (15), to dispute the third of the 14 races in Grand-Am, The race this Saturday (19), as is common in the championship, will go a total of 400 km in a period of 2 hours and 45 minutes, with a multiplication of all these factors it can usually hinder the work of the drivers in Mexico.

But nothing stops the optimism of Ricardo. After some aerodynamic problems in the previous race, at Homestead, now he believes that the whole Lola Pontiac should be more competitive. “I think Mexico City will be a lot better for us. At tracks like Mexico City and VIR we are expecting to have a good performance. At Homestead we did a lot of work on the aero, trying to improve it. I think everything looks a lot more positive for the next race.” he said

This will be the first race for Ricardo in the traditional Hermanos Rodriguez Autodrome, which hosted Formula 1 until 1992, in addition to other categories such as NASCAR, Champ Car World Series and most recently A1GP. While this is a very technical circuit, with challenging curves as Peraltada - a part at high speed before the main straight, the Brazilian believes that there are secrets to adapt to the track. “I have never been to the Mexico City circuit yet so I don’t know it. I saw the layout and some output from the race last year. I think the way to learn it is walking the track one day before the practice.”

The city, which is 2,400 meters above sea level, naturally hinders the sports activities, because of the low concentration of oxygen. Where in other sports, it affects only the athlete, in the car it can affect the engine, with loss of power. The teams that can offset this loss in any way tend to take advantage. And in this sense Ricardo can stay calm. His team, Krohn Racing, came second in the race for two consecutive years, in addition to record the pole position in 2007.

The structure of the Krohn Racing and the growth of Grand-Am provide an extra degree of motivation to Ricardo, who will compete in all stages of the schedule, alternating between the tracks of North American and Stock Car in Brazil, with Panasonic Racing.“I am really motivated about the Grand-Am Series. A lot is going on. The times are very close in the sessions and also in the race. So many things are happening in the race because of the GT cars. For me it’s good motivation for racing.” The race will be this Saturday at 4.00pm local time.

Position in the championship (after 2 of 14 races):

1 Memo Rojas/Scott Pruett, 70 pontos

2 Alex Gurney / Jon Fogarty, 57

3 Oswaldo Negri / Mark Patterson, 55

4 Jim Matteus / Marc Goossens, 51

5 Bill Auberlen / Joey Hand, 48

   Ricardo Zonta / Nic Johnsson, 48

7 JC France / João Barbosa, 44

8 Eric van de Poele / Tracy Krohn, 43