Great news! We all made it to Bonneville! Both vehicles and most of the team fit and well. There was a bout of stomach issues doing the rounds which many of us suffered from to some degree or other. Alas dear Bruce caught the worst of it and was laid up in the campervan for a few days. Thankfully he has made a recovery and is now back better than ever!
The first and most important thing to note is that the salt is by far and away the worst we have ever seen.
The route from the end of the road to the pit area is over a mile of mud before any salt appears and then another two miles before it’s hard enough to race on. Due to the weather being unbelievably hot and windy the actual surface is good and hard, but it’s also very thin. We are racing well and many people have exceeded previous records, but it is worse than we feared.
First order of business upon arrival was to set up the pit area.
Then just as we were preparing both vehicles for tech inspection the mother of all winds came out of nowhere and slat blasted all of us and our equipment.
That called an end to proceedings for the day and once everything was secured and the damaged gazebo’s (Eezi ups) were removed we left for camp.
Next day the weather was much more favourable, we finished all of the preparations, including the fitting of our new and much lighter aluminium flat floor and headed off for tech inspection with the usual level of trepidation.
First to go was the bike. We weren’t expecting any issues, but every inspector is different and you really can’t tell. Fortunately this year the inspector was far more interested in the fuel injection system and the multiple spark plugs that the bike sailed through without any issues.
Great work all involved in that!
The car was a lot more worrying as regular readers will be aware that we have had issues with the roll cage area around the drivers helmet. We had devised a system that we thought was good enough, but would the tech inspectors agree?
Thankfully the comment was “Good solution, well done!”
The car passed without any other issues and we were good to race!
Next day, we took both the car and the bike to their respective start lines.
First order of business was to get some event fuel, realistically the bike is the only vehicle in the running for a record and so we needed the correct fuel if we managed a couple of good runs
Alas, after about a quarter of a mile the bike inexplicably cut out.
The decision was made to run the car and then have a look into possible causes.
The other Ian set off with his usual display of wheel spin and lack of control until just after the 1 mile marker at around 175 mph there was a loud popping noise and the cabin filled with smoke.
Slightly disturbed by this event he immediately shut everything down and brought the car to a halt as quickly as possible. Thankfully there was no fire! We quickly returned the car to the pits there was an awful lot of oil all over the engine and it was this spraying onto the turbo that caused the smoke.
It was way too hot to do anything, so slightly dejectedly we called it a night and returned to our repsective bedrooms.
