BRAVING THE AUSSIE BONNEVILLE
We join the speed addicts on the Lake Gairdner salt
SOME YEARS AGO I asked a group of Australian racers why they travelled all the way to the Bonneville Salt Flats in the USA for their Land Speed Record attempts. Their answer? ‘Because it’s easier to get to than Lake Gairdner.’ They were only half-joking. The drive from Adelaide to the venue for the 28th annual Speed Week takes me seven hours. About five hours in, the road turns to dirt, and the last 15 miles of the journey are exhausting: the car rattles along rutted tracks made especially treacherous by the local wildlife. An emu would be a bloody big thing to hit.
I spare a thought for those bumping along with a racecar or bike in tow, but every one of them will later tell me that the uncomfortable ride was worth it, and I will understand. There is no place in the world more conducive to going fast than Lake Gairdner – not even Bonneville, where conditions in recent times have often been too inconsistent for record-breaking feats – and, goodness me, it is stunning. As the dry salt lake finally comes into view, I experience the euphoria of a small child spotting the ocean for the first time.
The Gawler Ranges Aboriginal People are the traditional custodians of Lake Gairdner, and it is easy to imagine how the place came to assume spiritual significance for the indigenous locals. At 99 miles long and 30 miles across, it is sufficiently immense to be visible from outer space. Vehicles are normally prohibited from driving on the lake, but an exception is made for Speed Week, and this time around 232 racers have taken advantage of the rare opportunity to run on the pancake-flat salt, 1.2m thick and hard as concrete.
Speed Week is organised by the members of Dry Lakes Racers Australia, a unique bunch whose only common interest is satisfying a need for speed (or ‘sickness for quickness’) and talking about it over a cold beer afterwards. It is a serious business, however: the event is run under the strictest safety regulations and with genuine concern for the fragile environment that enables the DLRA’s activites. Before trundling out onto the vast white expanse I have to blow the red Outback dust off my car, and I am instructed to park on a tarpaulin to protect the pristine surface.
The DLRA course is nine miles long – that’s two miles to get up to full speed, a timed three-mile stretch, and then four miles to slow down. A fair bit of stopping distance is needed when you’re relying on a parachute to gradually bring you to a halt from well past 200mph. Longer still, at 12 miles, is the course for the World Speed Trials, held under the auspices of the FIM (Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme) on the last two days of Speed Week.
There are dozens of classes for cars and motorcycles, meaning that there is an interesting variety of machinery old and new in action, but it is apparent that the streamliners are the main attraction for many of the spectators. When these strange, slippery creations are ready to make a pass they jump to the front of the queue like first-class passengers at the airport, and for good reason.
For these thoroughbreds of the flat track there is absolutely no margin for error; everything, from tyre pressure to the weather conditions, must be just so. A marginally sub-optimal set-up or a light crosswind could prove catastrophic once the pilot has opened the taps, because at Lake Gairdner speeds there are no trivial accidents. ‘Pilot’ is the correct word, for a streamliner is like a fighter jet without wings, barely recognisable as a relative of your garden-variety automobile or bike.
This year, Speed Week and the promise of perfect salt have brought two rapid streamliners from the USA to the Australian wilderness. There’s Target 550, a 43ft-long ‘car’ that will clock 345.125mph as it builds towards a self-explanatory goal. And then there’s the ‘motorcycle’ Streamliner 7. This 21ft carbonfibre sled is hurled along by a methanol-guzzling, 500bhp, 3.0-litre turbocharged V4 engine and is controlled, to the extent that it can be, by Valerie Thompson, ‘America’s Queen of Speed’.
Valerie is the only woman ever to break 300mph on two wheels, but the mark of 304.263mph that she managed at Bonneville in 2016 is some way short of her ultimate ambition.
‘We’ve come to Lake Gairdner to break Rocky Robinson’s [overall motorcycle] world record of 376.363mph,’ she tells me. I mention that it’s a big jump from 304 to 376…
‘That’s where the fun starts, right?’ she laughs. ‘And in some ways the faster you go, the easier it gets. You’re completely focused and you don’t have time to think about anything beyond the next step. It’s one gear shift at a time, one parachute release at a time.’
There is no typical route into the sport of record-breaking, but it is surprising to hear that Valerie, a former banker, only hopped on a motorcycle for the first time at the suggestion of a friend.
‘Back in 1999 I got laid off and I decided that I needed to do something fun and exciting. A buddy told me that there was a big community of female motorbike riders in Scottsdale [in Arizona, where Valerie lives], and I thought: well, I’m going to have to get me a bike. Five years late I started drag racing on quarter-mile strips, and everything I’ve done since has been building towards this moment.’
She sounds confident despite the fact that she has only completed half a dozen runs in Streamliner 7 prior to coming to Lake Gairdner, and despite the fact that she initially (and unsurprisingly) found the cockpit claustrophobic. Adjustments to the seat have helped: ‘I’m actually more relaxed inside it now; it’s beforehand that I get uptight.’
There is no sign of nerves as 7 is prepared for a first shakedown run, but as soon as the bright red cigar tube gets rolling it becomes clear that something is amiss. A digital gremlin has hitched a ride with Valerie, and as a result the throttle is not talking to the computer properly, and the dash display is unhelpfully blank.
‘We’ll get it fixed,’ she says brightly afterwards. ‘We’ means the crew of 15, led by designer Denis Manning. As they beaver away Valerie elaborates on idiosyncracies of her machine.
‘I was kind of bumping off my skids out there. You steer with two joysticks, and it’s hard to keep it stable when you don’t have any acceleration. See, they tow me up to 50mph and then I release the rope, stick it in first and give it some throttle, and ordinarily [the bike] starts standing up. I pulled the parachutes even though I was going slowly, just because it’s useful to practise the routine.’
On day four things appear to be heading in the right direction, which is to say: away from the start in a dead-straight line, in a hurry. Camera phones track 7 as it flashes across the landscape, the impressive spectacle just reward for the patience of all those who have schlepped tents and a week’s worth of supplies into the scorching-hot Outback just to be close to the action. As the mercury creeps towards 40ºC, Valerie hits 328.476 mph at the five-mile exit. A new personal best.
It turns out she didn’t even get out of third gear and into top, and 7 was apparently running on only three cylinders, suggesting there is plenty in reserve for the end of the week and the official assault on Rocky Robinson’s record.
On the planned day of reckoning the wind kicks up (Can a zephyr ‘kick up’?) confining 7 to the pits but, happily, the weather the next morning is glorious. Valerie, smiling a big American smile, seems more at ease than at any point during testing, and as I look out across the blinding white lake I can just make out the officials from the FIM setting up timing equipment on the 12-mile track. Team 7 is quietly talking about not only breaking Robinson’s record, set in the streamliner Ack Attack back in 2010, but also pushing on to 400mph…
Certainly, as Valerie winds up the V4 engine (firing on all cylinders this time), it seems conceivable that she’ll get there. With Speed Week’s tent city left far behind she screams toward the horizon and passes the four-mile marker at well over 300mph. Inside the cockpit, 329mph flashes up on the now-functioning dash screen. Another personal best for Valerie. The digits keep ticking over – 330mph, 335, 340. Then things go very wrong, very fast.
Those in the chase vehicles see the streamliner topple over, then watch the tail lift. For a moment 7 flutters in the air like a sycamore seed before smashing back to the ground. The parachutes deploy, stabilising the trajectory of the wreckage, but initially they seem to do little to slow it down; 7 is moving as quickly on its side as it was when upright. It skitters across the salt for what feels like an eternity before at last sliding to a stop. The trail of debris is a mile long.
Observing a Land Speed Record attempt is not like watching racing at a circuit or a drag strip. When accidents occur, they happen an awfully long way from the crowd; it is impossible to know, initially, if everything is more or less okay. At Speed Week base camp, everybody is quiet until word comes through that Valerie has, incredibly, walked away from the crash with just a few cuts and bruises.
Record-breakers are marked out by their willingness to keep the pedal to the floor when others would lift, but also by their ability to rationalise events that would make the rest of us extremely irrational. Valerie is aware that she was lucky not to be seriously injured, but her words after the crash are telling: ‘The wreck was unfortunate, but […] we proved the superiority of the moncoque design and [the bike’s] safety features. We are not giving up on our quest for the new record.’ Lake Gairdner has not seen the last of her.
Speed Week 2019 will take place at Lake Gairdner on 4-8 March. Entries are open now, and self-sufficient spectators will again be welcome. For more information, visit dlra.org.au.
For the latest news on Valerie Thompson’s record-breaking exploits, visit valeriethompsonracing.com.
‘Team 7 is quietly talking about not only breaking Rocky Robinson’s record, but also pushing on to 400mph’