Land Speed Racing

Land Speed Racing

For every type of motorsport there is a different type of gear-head. For those that love the thrill of competitive straight line speed choose drag racing, those that love the thrill of g-forces choose road racing, and for the truly insane speed demons, there is land speed racing. Now you may be familiar with the more known speed event, which is held annually at the salt flats of Bonneville in Utah. What you may not know is that for those that are unable to make it to the west side of the US, Maxton, North Carolina provides a place where you can try to Velocity max (V-max) your vehicle. Like Bonneville, the chance to run cars and motorcycles is available to those who choose to dare. However, unlike Bonneville’s seemingly endless land area to run these speeds, Maxton’s venue is limited to an inactive air force base runway which is ~1.75 miles long. This gives drivers a standing mile to record their fastest speed with plenty of time to shut down before meeting the fence at the end of the airport property.

One of the greatest things about these events, unlike other forms of racing, is that there are very few company/factory sponsors. More prevalent, instead, are the skills and craftsmanship of the shade-tree mechanic, the local shop owner, etc. that puts their knowledge and ingenuity into effect. So instead of seeing a lot of high-dollar prototypes and supercars you see engine swapped, nitrous equipped, rockets that formerly represented the modest sports car that used to be in your garage. This is often where your deserted sports cars end up. “You done with that ’89 RX-7? I’ll take it!” says the junkie with an evil smile, knowing that he has a fresh 350 cid V8 waiting in the garage for a chassis.

Early in 2007 I attended this same event but failed to remember to take my camera. In the previous trip I attended along with a crew from RPM (Revolutionary Performance & Machine) out of Mt. Juliet, TN. They brought out a Datsun 240Z with a small block Chevy swap. That outing was the first time for any of that “crew” to attend such an event, so we set out a tad bit underprepared. The trip took 10.5 hours on the account of getting lost, which landed us there at approximately 5:30AM on Saturday morning. So after about an hour of sleep I awoke to the sound of an engine starting…and if you’ve ever been around even one V8 with open headers then you would understand why naptime was over. Long story short, we missed the rookie orientation, failed tech inspection for 150mph, which left us to a speed limit of 135 and not able to run until Saturday. After much waiting we finally made a pass, only to find out that the tachometer did not work and with no speedometer we had no way of telling speed. We managed to stay under 145 so we were not punished in anyway. Next time we’d be prepared…

So now on my 2nd outing, and a more experienced RPM crew’s 3rd, we headed to Maxton to try it again. This time we headed there with a V6 Firebird with a reasonable hit of nitrous (NOS or “Naws” to those who don’t know the real meaning). This time we knew the game and achieved the “OK” to run the car to 150mph. After being rained out Saturday and waiting for the strip to dry we made our pass. The car streaked through the timing lights at an amazing speed…of 98mph?! Wtf?? When I reached the paddock I was informed as to why our speed was so slow. Daryl, the RPM driver, said that at 3/4 distance he lost power in 3rd gear and oil pressure was pretty much zero. A look in the engine bay explained in a hurry. We effectively had “chocolate milkshake” under the hood. Oil and Coolant mixed together equals milkshake, which meant that the motor was done. With no hope left for us we packed up the ‘bird and went to watch another group of fellow racers from Middle-TN area.

That group of racers, inclusive with Henderson racing, had much better luck than we did. Their driver, Kris, in his Jaguar with a V8 swap and a 300hp hit of nitrous took the “Real Street” class win along with the Hot Rod Challenge for 2008. Look for him in the August issue.