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Football stadiums and fast cars are two things dear to my heart. When they're combined I'm left with little to complain about although I wish my school had offered Spanish as a GCSE option.
That way I'd have stood half a chance of understanding what the commentator was getting all excited about. Then it dawned on me. What the clock on the scoreboard in one end of Cordoba's debilitated sports stadium couldn't tell me because it had broken long ago - probably the day when Austria knocked West Germany out of the 1978 FIFA World Cup at the venue - and what I didn't want to find out for myself through fear of having my watch pinched - was that it was fast approaching 19.05 and the start of the first stage of Rally Argentina.
Judging by the commentator's growing excitement and the frenzy he was sending the near-capacity crowd into, something big was about to happen.
Then, amid a crackling of exhausts and a popping of engines the first opponents - Per-Gunnar Andersson and Patrik Sandell, two leading lights of the Junior world championship - entered the battleground for two runs around a 1.3-mile course that wound its way across the pitch and surrounding athletics track.
