First day of the Mike Cook Top Speed Shootout. The course is pretty bad. There was a lotta rain on the last day of World of Speed and there was a ton of runoff that ended on the salt in puddles, pools and rivers. The salt had been pretty hard up til then, but the water did a number on it. The way the course is laid out, it runs from about 1500 feet north of I-80 in a northwest direction toward what's always been called "Floating Mountain" but apparently that was in error and is now called "Floating Island." Hell, I dunno...anyway, there's the "freeway end" and the "mountain end." The freeway end is probably better referred to as the "Bonneville Mud Flats." See first photo. It's slippery as hell as well as soft and sticky. There's a small lake that ya have to drive thru on the way to the pits at the Freeway End. http://mappery.com/Bonneville-Salt-Flats-International-Speedway-Map That links to an image of the course layout. There are 3 streamliners (Charles Nearburg's "Spirit of Rett", The Nish "Frankenstein" and George Poteet's "Speed Demon") and numerous bikes, mainly partially-streamlined sit-on bikes, although there's the Ack Attack motorcycle streamliner that holds the record at 387 and change...they're shootin for a record over 400 (the Speed Demon is shooting for 450.) Leslie Porterfeld has several bikes here (2nd photo)...and Jon and Nancy Wennerberg (owners of www.landracing.com) have a couple. Charles Nearburg (3rd photo) made the first run, although that option had been offered to Mike Nish in Frankenstein, but he turned it down because the course was too rough. Many teams are planning to hold off until Wednesday, only planning on making shake-down runs tomorrow to calibrate traction control systems and test other subsystems. Anyway, Nearburg's run was apparently a shakedown, cuz he "only" ran 378, aborting after running up thru 4th (out of 5) gear. Richard Assen (from New Zealand and a real nice guy) made several runs and set an AMA record (253.xxx) and an FIM record (243.xxx) and plans to bump those numbers higher tomorrow. I did all my shooting from the pit end...tomorrow, I'll do a lot from the timing stand, which is at at the 5 mile marker to get speed shots, since several people have asked me to get those for 'em. There were a couple more little tidbits today. First was a coupla young kids in a Camaro convert (4th photo) who decided to (in addition to their lusting after Leslie) play "Dukes of Haphazard" in the area between Land's End and the pits. They weren't technically on the course, but since the Demon was preparing to make a run from the Mountain to the Freeway end, they were in a less than optimal place. I called the Timing Tower (who is the final arbiter of yay/nay on a clear course) and told 'em about the yahoos in the Camaro and a course steward went out to shoo 'em off before they wandered onto a hot course. They ended up in a shouting match and the son of the promoter showed up about that time and when he was greeted by a rigid digit, he told the driver that he'd pull him out thru the window and thump on him (he's a big enough boy to do it) the driver decided that exiting post haste was the better part of valor. And then there was the Demon's run. He made the fastest ever single motor, piston-engine, wheel-driven run ever on the salt at 446 mph. After the run (according to FIA rules) they had one hour to prepare the car for a run in the opposite direction. They'd already had 2 aborted runs, one because the bulkhead that separates the cockpit from the engine compartment wasn't fastened correctly and it allowed some smoke from a leaking transmission rear seal to enter the cockpit and George (correctly) aborted the run, not knowing what the problem was. The 2nd turn-out was because the driver's air bottle hadn't been turned on and he wasn't getting any fresh air into his helmet. Two shots, two holes in the feet. Anyway, the turnaround following the 446 mph run went fairly well...until it was time to re-start the car. The battery was dead. They had about 20 minutes of the hour left, so they put a battery charger on it and let it sit...power for the charger coming from a small Honda generator. (Photo 5) After about 10 minutes, George hit the starter and although it cranked over a few times, didn't start and the battery went flat again. Around that time, the data logger guy announced that there had been no output from the alternator for the entire qualifying run...so they assumed they had a junk alternator. Then they got a BIG battery charger which immediately killed the little generator. As if they hadn't tried enough things, they got a bigger generator (I dunno who owned all these devices, but it's sorta the Salt Flats way to help out if you have something that someone else needs), connected it to the big charger and that allowed George to crank it over until it started. Finally, with about 2 minutes to go before the hour was up, the motor was started and the push truck got it moving...and then...nothing. No drive. Seems there were a coupla soft spots in the salt and he hit 'em both. When he did, the wheel speed spiked and on the 2nd one, the driveshaft snapped the pinion yoke and thrashed around, beating the hell outta everything in its way. Sound familiar? I told the engine builder (Kenny Duttweiler) that I'd come to the conclusion that if he could build a motor big enough to snap a pinion yoke...well, so could I. I showed him a photo of the Monte Carlo's carnage and we both got a bit of a laugh out of it. That ended the runs for the day, except for Andy Sills and Erin Hunter who tried to be the first two-rider bike (other than a sidecar) to run over 200. They got close at around 177, but didn't quite hit the 200 mark. There's no class for a two-up bike, but they wanted to do it for the "gee-whiz" value, I spose. And after that I split. It was plenty for one day. I'm gonna be out there around 7 am (I hope I can drag myself outta bed at 6) and start shooting for another day.
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