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Hans prepares the Whitehawk for Ellen Van Der Horst to
race. The Whitehawk team spent most of the day completely dissasembling the bike, cleaning
the fine Nevada desert dust out of it, sanding the previous day's scrapes out and adding
new sponsors decals. Ellen completed her sprint today without problems, but due to failure
of both timing systems, no time was recorded for her run. I heard an estimated speed of
about 57MPH. |
| Tanya Markham, who had been slated to race the Easy
Racers Colorado to attempt a new womens speed record, has been out of commision with the
flu all week. After a trip to the hospital today for a shot of antibiotics, she at least
felt well enough to come watch the bikes launch. Her father Freddy, and Mackie Martin ran
the Double Gold today to fill her spot. |
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Matt Weaver talks to Jan Van Eijden about the finer points
of speedbike racing. The Kyle Edge receives the final tweaks before Matt's race time. In a
cruel twist of fate, Matt's launching dolly did not release properly, causing problems
which made him miss his time slot for racing. |
| Mackie Martin looks on while Gardner and Mack work
on pedals to allow him to stoke in the Goldrush. Fast Freddy Markham piloted. While they
had a bit of trouble getting strted and stopped, they were able to make a good run at
58.40MPH. Gardner had to send off for a
tailfin/camera pod from the Easy Racers shop to replace the one destroyed in yesterday's
Virtual Rush crash. He hopes to have the bike back on the road tomorrow. |
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Wednesday's racing was still a bit cool, in the upper 50s,
but the wind quieted down to just a whisper, so conditions were near ideal for fast runs. Jan Van Eijden finishes his run in the Blue White Hawk. Jan ran the
200 meter trap at 67.075MPH. The Blue Hawk was not so severly damaged in it's crash, and
only had to have the scrapes sanded out of the body to be raced today. |
| Rob English screams by in the Mango. Rob did his
run at 67.37 MPH. Rob had a bit of a problem stopping for the catching crew, and while
making an abbreviated stop, managed to run right into Jonathan Woolrich's sensitive bits.
Rob said he was just trying to downshift and didn't notice how close he was until the last
minute. |
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The catching crew extracts Rob from the Mango. Rob said he
kept trying to switch to a higher gear, but found he was already in the high gear. He and
Miles Kinsbury will install a bigger gear before the next race. The Smithsonian crew
catches the action on video. |
| Sam Whittingham lays down a blistering 74.689 MPH
run. That's pretty fast considering his air mask wasn't working properly and he didn't
even remember the second half of the 5 mile runup. |
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After the races, everyone gathered at the civic center for
a post meeting powow. As we now have more vehicles than slots to race, there will be a
face off between the Barracuda, the Delair streamliner, and the Dust Devil at the airport
frontage road in the morning to determine who gets the remaining spot on the Sr 305
course. The big excitement was that Andrea Blaseki
broke the womens speed record by going 60.62 MPH. |
