On one memorable occasion back in the early sixties, five cars turned up at Bonneville to take a shot at John Cobb's long standing record of 394mph. This was a time when Nathan Ostich and a young Craig Breedlove thumbed their noses at the authorities and did what had already been proven successful with the water speed record by switching to jet power. The other competitors with wheel driven cars, Donald Campbell and his Bluebird included, saw the writing on the wall and began making plans for thrust driven vehicles of their own. A couple of years later, two of those five - Craig Breedlove and Art Arfons - returned for a thrilling series of runs that traded the record back and forth making headline news on TV stations throughout the world. Since then, nothing like it has been seen again - until this coming September that is. Yet again, Craig Breedlove and his Spirit of America team will be heading, not for Bonneville Salt Flats this time, but for the Black Rock Desert, Nevada for a head to head with the ThrustSSC team. It should be a fascinating contest and one that is bound to create as much media attention as the previous duels with Arfons.
Black Rock is now the place for unlimited landspeed records and both teams have experience of record attempts there. Much of the data relating to surface conditions used for the design of ThrustSSC came from Richard Noble's successful runs with Thrust2 back in the early eighties, while Craig Breedlove and his team were there last year for his attempts to beat Richard's record - attempts that nearly ended in disaster. After switching from the Bonneville salt, and racing against time before the winter weather returned, Craig began a series of runs that saw speeds leap in increments of over 100mph until he was knocking on the door of 633mph. Announcing his intention of going for it, his team tweaked up the afterburner and strapped him into the tiny cockpit at the front of the super slim Spirit of America. With a very similar power to weight ratio as ThrustSSC, the car doesn't hang around for long and pretty soon Craig was hurtling towards the measured mile. Surprised by the extra power of the reworked burner, he was on and off the throttle but still heading for the history books when the right rear wheel suddenly lifted gracefully from the desert tipping the car onto its left side. After looking as though it might return to earth as quickly as it had left it, the wheel lifted again leaving Craig within inches of disaster. If the nose had dug in, that would surely have been it for the speed legend. But using all his vast experience, Craig backed off the throttle, waited until he had all the wheels on the ground again, and then as it began a sharp turn to the right carving an arc across the desert, he dumped the chutes to bring things to a halt. Stepping out without a scratch from a ride that had recorded a peak of 675mph on the telemetry, Craig announced his intention of getting the car back to his Rio Vista base immediately to begin the job of, firstly finding out what caused this the world's fastest motoring accident, and then repairing the damage to the chassis and bodywork. Obviously, the SoA team looked closely at the likely contributory factors of the accident before simple rebuilding to the original specification, so expect some subtle change to the car when it re-emerges this summer. Our information is that it will be considerably cleaner around the rear end with the parachute cans relocated from under the car and sporting a much bigger tail. Time will tell.
Originally, Craig had hoped to persuade the Bureau of Land Management, who administer and manage the use of wilderness areas for recreational purposes, to issue a permit for the desert from July 97, giving the maximum possible time to develop the car, but mindful of public opinion which can be quite sensitive about these things in the US, the BLM decided to stick with their original intention and issue a permit for September and October only. Model rocketeers, land yacht sailors, offroaders, and those who just plain like to get away from it all need to be accommodated, and so LSR teams have to stake their claims just like everybody else. Naturally, the BLM were a little nervous about things after Craig's mishap, especially since the car ended up close to a spectator area. This year, in the interests of safety, they will be placing more restrictions on how and where spectators get onto the desert while the cars are running, but this is a huge place, so both teams needed to work out how they would operate the joint record attempts.
A couple of months back, Richard Noble and Martyn Davidson travelled to the US to meet with the Spirit of America team and the BLM to hammer out an agreement and method of operation. The results of that meeting were recorded in a formal agreement that both teams modified until all parties were satisfied with the result. While in Jordan, Richard received the final modifications to plan signed by Craig, which he in turn counter signed. So that's it - the deal is done and the race really is on! But how will it operate?
Basically, each team will be allocated a separate part of the desert and each will have separate camps and tracks. Each will be responsible for preparing their own tracks, so once again that means miles and miles of fodding. This area was used as a military range in WW2, and unlike Jordan it rains every year, rain which always brings new stones and debris to the surface, all of which must be cleared. The first official run day is September 2nd and the teams will toss a coin to see who runs first. From then on, the cars will run alternately, assuming that both are serviceable. If a team elects not to run on one of its specified slots, for whatever reason, then the other team can use that slot instead, which should guarantee regular action for all the many people who want to witness this unique event.
Following Craig's incident, the BLM plan to restrict where spectators will be located when the cars are running. But if you're planning on making it to Black Rock and worry that you won't see anything, never fear. The road that runs north from Gerlach tracks the edge of the desert and since it is built in a slightly elevated position offers great views across where the tracks will be. Those great shots of Craig running last year were taken from here. Seeing just one jet car run is a fantastic experience. As those veterans from Bonneville in the mid sixties will tell you, two is just awesome. Don't miss it.
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