Ready or not, there I went – into the lion’s den, as it were. Thankfully, I entered the track in a break in the traffic, and had the chance to come up to speed over a few laps without being run over. The next one hour and ten minutes was a blur of battles, point-bys, litter on the track – I stopped keeping track of the number of karts, body parts, and GoPro cameras on the racing surface – and, to be perfectly frank, looking back three times a lap to gauge when the leaders were coming. Also, the course marshals only wave blue flags for the top three karts – but since at the time Rubens Barrichello was leading, and Felipe Massa was second, I made sure to give them plenty of room. Barrichello even gave me a thumbs-up for the point by.

BMW sports car ace Augusto Farfus helped to balance out the numerous Brazilian open-wheel drivers in the field. (Photo: Carsten Horst / HYSET Ag)

The track itself was a very fun mixture of challenging mid and high-speed corners. And despite the fresh asphalt, it was very bumpy in places, which begins to wear on you when you are in the kart for an hour or more. The sequence of corners from turns three to turn seven were the ones I found most challenging, as the track went from fast, to slow, to slowest – but getting out of the last turn required hitting a curb and keeping your momentum up in order to extract a decent lap time. Annoyingly, there is an onboard video of Barrichello on YouTube where he makes it look far easier than I remember.

The second to last corner – a left-handed hairpin which had banking on the entry, and a tire wall on the exit – made you feel like more of a hero than you were. Roll in with a little more speed, and the kart seemed to handle it, every lap. However, that was precisely where seemingly every lap a new kart was in the wall – and also where Cassio had stuffed it and ruined my practice the day previous. I’ll admit I left a little on the table there each lap, but our goal was to finish, and I really didn’t want to be known as the American Journalist that Crashed the Kart.

Towards the end of my stint, while letting a pair of the Shell V-Power (Felipe Massa’s team) karts past, one of them – which I later learned was GP2 driver Lucas Di Grassi – hit my kart on the side and pushed me into the grass. No big deal, but at that moment the engine died. I quickly jumped out and tried to pull start it again, but it took a couple of minutes to realize that the contact had broken a section of the body, which had simply turned off the ignition switch. Flipping the switch and pulling the starter, the 13 horsepower Honda engine came to life again – just as our three-man crew arrived on the scene.

The crews of each kart were entertainment in and of themselves. Brazilians, it would appear, go out of their way to throw more people, noise, and commotion at any given situation. If it weren’t for that, our pitstops would seem as well choreographed as a mid-pack F1 team. Our guys ran our strategy, executed tire and fuel stops flawlessly, fixed failing brakes, made bodywork repairs, and pushed our kart up and down the pit road (Granja rules state that the karts have to be pushed, not driven, down pit road) with what can only be described as reckless abandon. Bless them, because they didn’t seem to notice that we were hoping for a top-30 finish – they treated it as if we were battling for the overall win.

After getting re-fired and on my way again – losing two laps in the process – my fuel was nearly depleted and it was time to come in. In I came, and I spent the rest of the afternoon eating Brazilian churrasco. However, I was asked to get back in the kart to do a stint at night, so with my uber-cool yellow visor installed, I got back in and went out. I wound up racing with Brazilian stock car driver Daniel Sera, who was clearly faster but was hamstrung with a really weak engine. So, I would push him down the long straightaways, and then hustle like crazy through the rest of the course to stay close – which was great as I learned quite a bit about driving these karts.

The winning team, which included Meira and former Indy car driver Christian Fittipaldi. (Photo: Carsten Horst / HYSET Ag)

What wasn’t so great was having the throttle hang open while pushing him into turn one. Luckily, I had enough brakes to slow the kart down but I pitted right away – with only two hours to go, I definitely didn’t want to be The American Journalist that Crashed the Kart.

After that bit of drama, I turned the kart over to PR guy Rodrigo Franca, and without drama, he guided our kart all the way to the finish where our #17 Bee Racing kart was officially classified in 27th place. But all eyes were on the drama at the front, as Vitor Meira, in one of the Fittipaldi karts, took the victory ahead of Rubens Barrichello by a scant four seconds – and, as he later told me, with only 200mL of fuel left in the tank.

With the fireworks going off as Meira crossed the finish line, the live television crews descending onto the track for post-race interviews (the entire race is broadcast live in Brazil), and high-fives all around our team, I had only one thought: No one back home will believe any of this.

I guess it will be just like the old days, with Cassio and I swapping war stories – except this time, it was about the time we finished the Granja Viana at the $4M track that Herman Tilke designed.

When he isn't diluting the talent pool at international karting events, Efrain Olivares looks after his motorsports PR clients through SHIFT Communications Group, LLC. Follow him on Twitter @RacerEfrain.