Thursday October 4th
Racing Reports
The incredible that seemed inevitable has been
done. Sam Whittingham racing the Varna Diablo has set a new World Speed Record at 77.03
MPH ! for the 200M flying start. Monday's World Record time of 76.61 mph is now a backup
for the record. Sam also set 2 more World records in the Flying start Mile and Kilometer
at 72.63 MPH and 75.23 MPH Respectively.
This brings great relief to a concerned but determined Varna team. The start time was
pushed back 40 minutes today in order to try to take advantage of better wind conditions.
Oddly wind conditions deteriorated almost immediately after Sam' s run.
The Double Gold Rush backed up their record set on Monday with a legal 200M run of 65.56
MPH. However, Fast Freddy really screwed up by thinking that the 200M mark was the finish
and he stopped pedaling and Chris Springer opened up the middle hatch over his head while
still in the traps! Remarkably, they still went very fast.
The Double Gold Rush dodged a huge bullet named Bearacuda which was timed at 67.96 mph in
the 200 and 67.89 in the 1 kilo however they experienced illegal winds. If this speed was
run during legal winds it would have exceeded the Double Gold Rush's record from Monday.
The progress of this team is remarkable. Incidentally, I think I remember Tai Stillwater (
the team leader) telling me quite early in the week that the top speed of their vehicle is
68 MPH.
| Blueyonder showed up to race at last with a
nice run of 61.67 mph. Their shimmy problem has been solved and Jason Queally is feeling
more confident with every run. I think we will see another sizeable jump in speed
tomorrow. The winds for Jason's runs were not legal. In this photo, Jason waits for his top before the Thursday run |
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Jason gets a warning from the nice police
officer man. |
This left another opportunity open for Fast
Tanya Markham to get a run in. Running in near darkness she bumped up her 200M time .2 MPH
to 47.56 MPH and hit 47.11 in the Kilo, but her wind was not legal
The 1 Mile timing wire shorted out right before the event began, so no 1 mile runs were
recorded.
After calculating the wind speeds for the Bearacuda I can confirm that they have set 2 new
world records in the Kilo and the Mile at 66.13 MPH and 65.95 MPH They do not have backups
for these runs yet.
After the runs we all went to a wonderful traditional dinner given to us by the local
Basque club and paid for by many of the local businesses. Bill Gaines gave a great
presentation on all the old HPV events from the 70's. There are some great photos that he
is working on putting on a CD. Chris Broome presented some certificates of really old
records that were never sent out to the Varna team and Jonathan Woolrich. One record was
for the Double Gold Rush with Fast Freddy at the helm and Sam Whittingham as stoker. It
dated back to 1993!!. OOPS, Sam's last name was misspelled on all of them.
While I have a little soap box, I'd just like to say that the IHPVA's timing system is an
old piece of junk that is horribly outdated. If some kind soul with a few thousand bucks
would like to help our organization, this would be a great contribution to our sport.
Media from around the world are videotaping truly embarrassing moments where officials are
trying to decipher the information coming out of this thing. Contact me if you can
help.
| We screwed around quite a bit Thursday at the
airport. Freddy was racing around the taxiway in the Mephisto like he was born in it. It
was a lot of fun.
In this photo, Chris Springer Squeezes into the Varna. |
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It seems that Gardner has decided not to build
any more bikes, but he would offer help to Freddy and Tanya if they wanted to take it up.
In this photo, Gardner Martin tries out the Varna. |
- Sean Costin
Friday Results |
