ThrustSSC Mach 1 Club

Gerlach, Nevada

Where?

From the earliest days of record breaking, those participating soon realised that success would depend not only on their bravery and skill, or the soundness of their vehicle's engineering, but also on the surface chosen to make the attempt. Indeed, the surface available is often a crucial factor in the design of the record-breaker in the first place. All manner of surfaces have been used or planned, ranging from everyday roads through to dried up salt beds, desert playas, concrete race-tracks, beaches or even on one occasion the frozen surface of a lake - at least there could be no arguments about whether or not the surface was flat on that occasion! Thrust 2's existing record was set on a dried-up lake bed in Nevada, a location that will also be used for Thrust SSC next year.

The desert surface that will provide the setting for Thrust SSC's supersonic runs is only the latest in a long line of LSR venues and one which the team stumbled on quite by chance when running Thrust 2 over ten years ago. After graduating from roads to race-tracks and then to beaches, the intrepid record-breakers of the Thirties hit upon the vast expanse of the Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah, USA as the ideal place on which to practice their craft.

As the name suggests, it is the dried-up bed of a vast prehistoric salt lake, which in it's initial state as found by the racers, featured a hard surface many inches, and in some cases feet, thick that proved ideal to their cause. The only irregularities were circular raised islands of salt that tended to build across the surface but which were fairly easily scraped flat before the course was marked out and the fun began. With anywhere between 10 - 13 miles of salt available, there was plenty of space to build up speed slowly, and just as importantly, slow down again after a run.

The Black Rock that gave its name to the location.

Lake Lahontan had at one time covered thousands of square miles of what is now part of the Northwest USA but has long since disappeared leaving not only the occasional liquid remnant of it's past in the form of a couple of isolated lakes, but also the dried up mud of it's lake bed - the Black Rock Desert. While it still floods in Winter, the Summer sun bakes the surface and causes it to dry out into flat, irregular -shaped polygons, mostly free from any form of plant life or other interruption. Crushed beneath the weight of a vehicle, the surface forms shallow ruts with a solid base, effectively carving out an ideal surface that unfolds before you. And did Thrust 2 like this surface? - you bet your bottom dollar it did ! In fact, it could have been made for it. With fourteen miles of usable surface available and with mountain ranges on either side, as well as the Black Rock that gave the place it's name at one end to aim for, a new location has been discovered and was about to be written into the history books of LSR folklore.

The desert is only just over a hundred miles North of the gambling down of Reno - the self-proclaimed Biggest Little City in the World - so most major amenities are within reach. Not exactly within easy reach but practically just around the corner in American terms. Even better were the facilities afforded by the small town of Gerlach located right on the edge of the desert. Or iginally it sprang up as a water stop for the railroad that headed West, a railroad that still plies it's trade today and one that sends trains, sometimes pulled by up to four locomotives, gently clanking through the town in a snake that seems to stretch from horizon to horizon. Since then, mining for Gypsum and other minerals had added to the population, but not by much, while the awesome beauty of the desert and it's surroundings also attracts hunters and those who simply want to enjoy the great o utdoors.

One of the friendliest bars in the World - Bev and Arley's Miners Club, Gerlach

Just as Thrust2 took to the Black Rock surface, so the residents of Gerlach took to the team running the car. The one motel was fully occupied for the duration of the attempts, while the nearby Bruno's Country Club and Miner's Club became the unofficial headquarters for the team. In 1993 the team went back for a ten year anniversary bash and found things virtually unchanged - including the local hospitality! American rival Craig Breedlove met up with Richard Noble and revealed that he too will be running his new car on the Black Rock Desert, so the locals will now have two teams to cheer on.

Bureau of Land Management representatives confirmed that if the strict guidelines laid down by them protecting the desert surface are met, then they will support individual attempts. What they will not support are any moves designed to move large scale record breaking meetings such as Bonneville Speedweek to Gerlach. If the Bonneville salt continues to erode, then some other location wi ll have to be found for this annual jamboree, and that location may well prove to be on the other side of the world in Western Australia.

But that's another story - for the time being the Thrust SSC team have the perfect location for their supersonic record attempt. Watch out Gerlach!

©Robin Richardson

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