By Bill Lightfoot ’61 i witness
Fast Forward
spring 2011
T
clark alumni magazine
64
he bonneville, Utah, Salt Flats, where the Bonneville Speed Week is held every year, really is a special place. The salt flats, and the mountains that ring them, have been named, deservedly, an official National Monument. They are beautiful any time of day, but particularly so at dawn or sunset. You can’t take a bad photo. And the salt really is salt. I’ve seen guys take a screwdriver, scrape some up, and put it on their hamburger. I was the driver of a specially prepared Alfa Romeo record car at Speed Week last August. We had the usual trials and tribulations that go with racing, although it was great fun overall, as is always the case when we take the amazing yellow Alfa Spyder (“Bonnie”) to compete in that unique and exotic locale. I have been competing at Bonneville for nine years and it is always a thrill. On my first runs the car started porpoising at about 200 mph, bobbing up and down as if it was going over waves. You don’t want to get air under the car because the nose could lift and the car could try to take off like an airplane. When a Camaro two cars ahead of me lifted off about 35 or 40 feet during its run, I was thinking, “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.” The salt looks smooth, but it’s not. At high speed it’s like driving on snow or ice; the car shifts and squirms beneath you, and if you lose control the car goes sideways. A car that travels over 175 mph requires a parachute, because if the car does go sideways you can pop the chute to keep it straight. After changing the ignition module and making some other changes we got back out on the salt and made a really good run. I had an average speed for the fifth mile of 233.841 — which was about 8 mph more than needed for a new record and the fastest that I’d gone — and an “out the back door” speed of 233.891 mph. We decided to put that run in our pocket and we took the car directly to impound.
The way it works is that you have to leave the car in impound overnight after a run that qualifies for a record and then make a back-up run the next morning. The average speed of the two runs is then calculated to see if you have broken a world record for the class. If the average is high enough to qualify, the engine is torn down to ensure it is legal. The car is quite claustrophobic. You wear a bulky, five-layer fireproof suit, thick boots and gloves, a head brace, arm restraints, leg restraints and six-point seatbelt. A driver must be able to get himself unstrapped and out of his car in 20 seconds — everyone is timed, but the officials look particularly closely at older guys like me (I’m 73) to be sure we can get out of the car if there is a fire. When you’re really moving, the sense of acceleration is very dramatic. The adrenaline kicks in and you’re just pushing it. We call that feeling “the red haze.” It only takes a few minutes to cover five miles. At the start you’re surrounded by a mob of people taking pictures, holding microphones and giving instructions, and the noise of the engines is deafening. Minutes later you’re sitting in a silent car, totally alone in the desert — you can’t see anyone, can’t hear anything. It’s kind of spooky. On August 19 we were out on the salt at dawn and I made a run that yielded a fifth-mile speed of 230.590 mph. Not fantastic, but more than enough to set a new world record. The old record, which I set last year, was 225.839 mph and the new one (the average of my last two runs) is 232.215. The car was torn down for post-record run inspection, and the Southern California Timing Association declared that it was legal and that I, and the all-important car and engineering team, were now official holders of the new world record for the Blown Fuel Modified Sports, under-two-liter class. The record won’t last forever — it could go away this year. But it will stand until somebody beats it.