Driving a race car across the ground at 400 mph is a scary thing. It's a ride you don't forget; so, despite my determination, as we pulled into Wendover, I had some mental reservations. Chiefly I thought, "And you've said you'll add another 100 miles to the record. Nice play, loudmouth."
Tom Green had taken the rational approach after Art had broken his record. Tom said, "That's enough of this stuff for me. I can say I held the land speed record at one time, and if you guys want to mess around with this Russian roulette stuff, go ahead, but let me off the merry-go-round. This is insanity."
Tom had one advantage over me, however. He was not committed. For me, there could be no backing off; so when we arrived in Wendover, I just checked into the motel, and the guys took the car and the equipment to the Flats. It was too late to run that day, but the crew could get the camp set up and the car off the trailer. Doing things kept my mind busy, but as soon as I had time to myself, I had to face my thoughts, which, at least as I sat in my room, involved wondering where it was all going to end. It wasn't just a matter of breaking the record anymore. Suddenly I had competition--competition with three times the power I had, I might add--and I was feeling the pressure. Before, my concern had been to get the car ready, keep the crew busy, watch the weather, and run for the record. Now I had to keep the wolves off my back. I wasn't too happy about the idea that I would have to go out there and run every time somebody felt like breaking my record. I remembered too well what it was like out there, having that big car sliding around, bouncing and banging. Yes, I had misgivings, but that didn't make any difference. I was in Wendover. My car was running. "My" record had been taken from me. I had to try to get it back.
I decided to drive out to the course. As I drove up to the camp, I smelled the aroma of the Salt Flats--hot dogs cooking on a grill, jet fuel being pumped into the car, coffee heating on a hot plate. It was just the same as last year, only I had lost a lot of the enthusiasm for the whole thing. Now I was there of necessity.
Next day I ran the car about 300 mph. The condition of the track was even worse than I had thought, compounding my concern about the whole affair. The Arfons's cars had really chewed up the salt, and it was difficult to keep the Spirit in a straight line. But I had little choice if I intended to live up to my promise. And, as if I wasn't determined enough, Art had told the Akron Beacon Journal that I would never go 500. I would just have to find the smoothest portions of the track and try to steer around the rough spots. I was going to go 500.
On the next practice run I certainly didn't find the smooth route. At about 400 mph, I hit a series of bumps, and the car went up on two wheels--off course and heading, as I later learned, straight for Joe Petrali's timing shack. I shut the engine down, got the car back on the course and popped the chutes. I was too busy to notice at the time that the car was headed for Joe's shack, but I was told that Joe's eyes were as big as the 48-inch tires on the Spirit. So were mine.
Discovering the proper route was going to take time. I walked the course, drove it in an automobile, and did everything but crawl it on my hands and knees (I would have done that if I had thought it would help). Finally, I felt that I knew every inch, soft spot, and rut--and there was no way to miss them all. All I could do was select a relatively smooth course and memorize it. Now, if I just had a navigator with a road map so that I wouldn't forget the route, everything would be fine. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a taker. He would have had to ride outside.
The following morning I decided to make a try at a record run. The weather was good, and the track would only get worse. The car was ready. The south end of the course was the roughest; so I decided to run through it first, building up speed as I approached the smooth, measured mile. I went only 438, but I expected the first to be the slower run because the build-up had to be made through the bumpy end of the course. On the return trip I would have to shut down in the rough portion, but by then I would already be through the mile.
The trip back was frightening. I was really blazing as I left the measured mile. As I cut the engine and hit the parachute button--the small dynamite charge that fires the pilot chute popped loud and clear--I hit the rough stuff with such force that my head smashed right through the side of the plexiglass canopy. Luckily, my head bounced right back in, and I held tightly to the steering wheel as the car bounced to a stop. The entire right side of the canopy had been smashed out, and my racing helmet bore deep scars. I had a headache, but I again held the world's land speed record. The average speed of the two runs was 468 mph. The return run was 498, a heartbreaking 2 mph off the 500 I had said I would do.
Thus I faced another grueling series of runs, for I was going to go 500. We spent the next day repairing the canopy and installing rubber pads in the cockpit, so that when I was thrown around, I would at least be bouncing off cushions, not metal. Once the cockpit was padded and the canopy repaired, I went over to talk to Roland Portwood, who was in charge of the road crew that was maintaining the track. As I rode up and down on the truck, I saw that his guys were really doing their best to get the course smooth. They couldn't do the impossible, but it was good to see they were doing all they could.
Track conditions for LSR attempts are not what most people think. Chuck holes, and even a two-foot wide ditch, don't affect the handling of the car because it's traveling at such fantastic speeds. At 500 mph you are approaching at 900 feet per second (which, incidentally, is faster than a .45 caliber bullet travels). At that speed the suspension doesn't even have time to react as it passes over a hole. If a wheel goes over a one-foot-diameter hole, it is over it only for one nine-hundredth of a second. The wheel just doesn't have time to drop. It drops maybe one-sixteenth of an inch before there's something solid under it again. If you drive down the LSR course in a stock car at 100 MPH, you notice the holes, but not in the jet car at 400 or 500 mph.
A change in the elevation of the course is a different thing, however. A six-inch drop in one mile is equivalent to running off a curb in a regular car because you cover the ground so quickly. The jet car is traveling so fast that slight changes in elevation are crucial and can have a significant effect on LSR attempts. Yet it's almost impossible to remove these particular irregularities from the course with normal road grading equip- ment, and this is all that's available at the Flats.
Roland and his crew were doing everything possible, and I stayed with them until midnight. I couldn't stay longer because I had to get some rest before the drive in the morning. They stayed all night, working on their own time to try to get that course ready for me.
I was really afraid of the run, but I felt that I had to make it if I wanted to keep Art off my back for the rest of the season. If I could just go 500, 1 felt that Art would not come back again at least until next year. Winning the LSR had suddenly become much more than a race. It had become a psychological battle, and I had started using a lot of strategy. Holding, not just winning, the LSR more and more involved psyching out the other guy. It's a super-dangerous thing, this running 500 mph, and, somehow, I had to get Art thinking that there was no point in risking his car against the odds. I had to make Art think he was beat and keep him back in Akron for the winter.
That night, for the first time in my racing career, I couldn't sleep. I was tired, it was late, but I just lay in bed and tossed. I was afraid of the run next day, and I imagined the worst possible outcome. I feared the Spirit would not make it through the day, and I was sure that I would not see another sunset on the Salt Flats. I got up and wrote letters to my kids--nothing maudlin, just short notes to tell them that I was thinking of them on the night before my 500 mph run and that I missed them. The tour and getting the car ready to run again had kept me away from them for the past six months, and I really did miss them. I called them often, but now it was too early in the morning to call. So I wrote to them instead.
I slept a little after writing the letters, and it was a badly needed rest. The next day was to be a big one.
