Excellent day for Land Speed Racing here in Wilmington!
Issues in the timing system did not allow racing to get underway till about 10:30 AM. Because of this, the airport authority allowed racing to go to 06:00 PM instead of 04:00 PM.
Again, as yesterday, didn't get any speeds while I was at the starting line. I sporadically heard speeds on radios in tow vehicles but unfortunately CRS has kicked in! We'll need to wait for the run log from Tonya.
I don't know the drivers name but a silver Saturn caught fire near the finish line around 11:00 AM and halted the race briefly. Driver was OK.....car was hurt! When I went down to the finish line I stopped by to talk to photographer David Whealon and he showed me his pics of the Saturn. Kinda looked like a funny car fire with flames out of the front fender wells and down the side of the car! Would not have liked to have been the driver of that car!
On his second pass ever on pavement, Donny Cummins ran a smoking 222 in the Jesel car! I think this was top speed of the meet! As I posted earlier, he is part of the Cummins, Beck, Davidson and Thornsberry 300 MPH 911 A/BFR that runs El Mirage and Bonneville. I tried to convince him to bring the 911 to Wilmington and he said no go due to lack of suspension.....BUMMER. I would LOVE to see that roadster!
Around 2:30 PM Norris Andersen, who has run at Bonneville for many years, was on a very good pass in his Studebaker truck when he blew a rear tire. He started sliding on the pavement, got in the grass and ended up near the short shutdown exit. Thankfully, it remained upright the entire time. Such a gorgeous truck. Pics are in my link.
Unfortunately, Sean Moates had ems issues all weekend and never got any good runs in with his BIG Black Cadillac.
I would like to give a BIG thumbs up to the III Gen Racing Ecotec powered Chevette. This team is 3 generations of the Lindsey family out of Missouri having fun. Due to the wind yesterday and late start today, made only two passes this meet. Royce (2nd generation) made a 117 pass yesterday with the strong headwind. Today, Brady (3rd generation) made a pass of 124.7xx just shy of his D license. What is so COOL is that Brady has just recently turned 16. REALLY nice family and it's GREAT to see the younger generation having fun in this sport. To top off that off, Butch (1st generation) gave me one of the t-shirts they had made up when they went to Bonneville.
As for the Hot Rod Top Speed Shootout:
Real Street winner was Bill Ammaral in his 2nd gen "Death Proof" Camaro with a 208!
Super Street winner was Brian Acton driving the Geezer 2 Express Firebird with a 217!
EXCELLENT runs from both cars/drivers!
As for bikes, IIRC quite a few of the fast ones were in the 175-210 range.....Sorry, I'm a car guy!
Again, GREAT day of Land Speed Racing.
Here is my Photobucket link from the staging lanes, start and finish lines:
http://s947.photobucket.com/user/GKABBT/library/Wilmington%2005042104As usual, I hope you enjoy.
Gregg
