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Bonneville Land Speed Record Update #10
Well tomorrow, Sunday, it comes down to the last three hours of racing at the 2008 Bonneville Land Speed Record meet. The question tomorrow morning is...will it be age or beauty that prevails?
This morning we showed up at the starting line at 8:00AM and Leslie Porterfield was there in front of us. She was first to go this time and we were second. She broke our record by 1.2 mph and now we are chasing her record of 192.8 mph. That's racing. Here we are going 190mph and it comes down to three hours and 1.2 mph.
We tried all day to find this 1.2 mph and you wouldn't think it would be difficult. But when you factor in track conditions, temperature and wind.well it is far more complex than you can imagine. Add to the equation that we are up against a factory supported Honda with race ECU, data download, on the fly engine management, GPS and more and it really becomes a challenge. Oh we have some of that, but we can't access it because we don't have the software. We think our O2 sensors are going away causing horsepower loss so we had two new ones sent Fed-X to us to. They were the wrong ones.
So what you have is a private team with a great motorcycle running a stock motorcycle and stock motor with no knowledge at this point of what the motor is doing and we're only 1.2 mph behind a class A racing team with everything. But somehow I love being the underdog and tomorrow I feel confident we'll pull it off.
We spent all day doing a process of elimination in an effort to find some more speed. First it was a traction issue and we fixed that. Then it was a power issue and we feel we have solved that. Then we checked our chassis setup and feel we have found some major advantages there. Finally, we think we have found another issue that I'll talk about in tomorrow's update and that we think can result in an additional 3 mph.
We feel confident and we can't wait to get on the starting line tomorrow morning. But next year I have assured myself that I will never find myself in this position again.
Aside from all this, Bonneville is really a great place. A fellow racer crashed yesterday at 142 mph and he's in the hospital a bit beat up. A book was passed around this morning to every team for signing and it'll be given to him to let him know we're with him. What a great community.
Rosey has been coming to Bonneville since the 60's and he is a legend here. I can't believe the number of racers that have stopped by to thank him for his racing advise. I'm “living” proof of this as I got out of my predicament earlier this week using his advice.
Earlier today we loaned some special tools we had made for our MV to a fellow racer and at the end of the day he returned the tools he used to get a record with and brought us a case of beer. I'm drinking one now.
All this points to the great bunch of people we're involved with. If you ever get the chance to come to Bonneville I can assure you you'll never regret it.
Our new update will take you for a ride with Rosey. Our film crew is the hardest working three guys I have ever seen and when our video is completed after this event you'll see a great story told and it'll be about people. Take a minute to watch it.
http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=1774131702&channel=1544608627&lineup=-1
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