UNFINISHED BUSINESS

SETTLING unfinished family business is always a tough score, and when your father is the late ‘Speed King’ Mickey Thompson, it’s exponentially harder. But son Danny laid some long-standing family ghosts to rest by driving his dad’s Challenger 2 to the Aa/fuel Streamliner record of 406.7mph at Speed Week 2016.

In 1960 Mickey, in Challenger 1, became the first-ever American to run over 400mph, and while this made him the fastest man in the world at the time, he was unable to log a consecutive pass for it to be recognised by the SCTA as an official record. Mickey then went through an avalanche of bad luck and mechanical gremlins in his new creation Challenger 2, all in pursuit of that elusive record, but eventually mothballed the streamliner to grow his company.

Danny pulled his father’s ’liner out of storage on the 50th anniversary of that first 400mph pass and began the arduous task of restoring and preparing it to lay claim to the record.

With a monumental crowd looking on, Danny took Challenger 2 down its first official pass on Saturday morning to hit 411.2mph through the traps – nearly 20mph faster than the 392.5mph record set by Charlie Nearburg in The Spirit Of Rett. Backing the record run up on Sunday morning, Danny rattled off a 402.3mph pass, resulting in an average speed of 406.7mph, finally giving the Thompson family an officially recognised world record. It was only 0.1mph faster than the 406.6mph Mickey had trapped all the way back in 1960.