What do you think?

[racergeo]

     Just an opinion based on talking to hundreds of racers, but I doubt that Ed Shadle, Al Teague, Tom Burkland (you get the idea) or ANY racer worth his salt is detoured one iota by the fact that a wealthy person has set the bar at a seemingly insurmountable height!!!!!
    On the contrary, that is what motivates them in the first place. You tell any racer "you can't beat me" and you have a race on your hands.

[generatorshovel]

I started out following LSR as a member of a mates team ,I got the bug instantly.
Iv'e known from the start , I'll never have the funds to go real fast, but I just had to build something , so I decided to build an engine combination no one had done before.
 I enjoy watching, listening to the really fast vehicles blast down the track , but I'm not envious , and I get just as much satisfaction going the fastest I can, with a small capacity bike that I built myself , with the ambition to lift the bar as much as I can , as often as I can , and hopefully one day I'll reach my goal ?
If I was only in the sport to go as fast as can be done in the class I run, I'm sure as hell wouldn't pick a single cylinder four stroke to do it on.
The friendship and comradery of LSR is shared regardless of who you are, or what you can do, or how much money you have .
Tiny

[McRat]

I started racing by riding my motorcycle to the track after work with a tool bag bungied on the back of my bike.  Seems things were a lot simpler back then. 

[Milwaukee Midget]

You tell any racer "you can't beat me" and you have a race on your hands.

[sockjohn]

Hey, if you must legislate it to "account" for the Big Bucks, then you might consider possibly coming up with Pro and Amateur level for each class.  The difference being that your Amateur level car would run in "claiming" classes, and your car would be for sale at a certain price (based upon its class) ANY time someone wanted to buy it.  Oh sure... go ahead and spend your $85k (or whatever) on your car and then run it in a $35,000 claiming class.  Just like horse racing, it would keep the "ringers" out of at least part of the game.  You could get the Corporate Sponsor and run the $weep$take$ classes or "do it yourself" and run the county fair claiming circuit.... take your pick.

This thread response is For Sale for $.02

Jim

I believe the Grassroots Motorsports challenge doesn't claim, they crush.

http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/events/2009-challenge/

IMHO, these are always interesting as somebody always does something unusual and unexpected, even if history tells us it has been done before.

FYI, they are working on a nice little Berkeley for a project car, but not for the motorsports challenge.
http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/project-cars/berzerkeley/

FWIW, I have made ZERO trips to the salt this year, not even as a spectator due to budget, but that is life.  I am young and will have rent/mortgage to pay for many more years and even many of those on a budget are past that point in life.  There are many out there with kids and pretty sure those aren't cheap!  Somehow we all manage to make do and work within our budgets.

[SPARKY]

The REAL reward is in the recall of the JOURNEY and the ploting and building  of the next challange:  I still can't get over the feeling that comes over me when I walk around in the shop and look at the RATICAL sitting there---I still can't believe that, we went, over 3!!!!!!

 ---we built and RE-built that thing---3 TIMES!!  Each time it got a little faster and  I learned new stuff---because it was not directionally stable---ie I was "busy"  probabally a lot like roadster guys. --- It is especially rough because I was not a finished welder--- and we cut and re cut stuff apart to change it. I now have a guys that does most of the welding because he welds all the time.  I can get much better when I weld a lot---we will be building some new projects in my back yard--- we will be building acouple of rat rods with some guys in the "hood".  by then maybe we can decide what to build  a new smaller lakester, a 4x4  mod PU or a liner---or shorten the RAT up to 190" and make a RMR out of it. 

For years I couldn't understand why anyone would do this and not want to drive---there is almost as much satisfaction of Andy and Joey making 14 passes for their AA with not one handlin issues as in setting a record---almost 

[Bob Drury]

  The neat thing about LSR in my opinion, is everytime you go, you can learn from the other guys you race with and against.  People are willing to share what they know and how they think you can solve your own problems (except finances and nagging wives).
  Since I returned from the WF I have started a three page list: changes for 2010.  One page is subtitled Race Car, one is Trailer, and one is Tow vehicle.
  It seems like everyday I add something new that I have seen someone else do or think they have done a better job of doing on their own stuff.
  The best part is that daydreaming is free, and I try to figure out how to do it myself cheaper yet just as safe.

[landsendlynda]

After following this thread and all the different opinions, I've noticed one absolute....EVERY dream that ANYONE has shared has found its way into your own personal dream.  This just proves what I've been trying to explain about Land Speed Racing:   Everyone who comes  through Land's End is sharing a piece of their dream with me, that means that because of all the racers, WE have the biggest dream ever imagined in the history of time!!  There isn't one person who has built something to race who hasn't had some kind of input from someone else.  That means a dream has been shared and will change the total outcome...forever.

Goals may differ, but "THE DREAM" will continue to grow and involve all of us, whether you're a shade tree mechanic that thought about putting this in that and see if it works, or the engineer that put this in that and got the results expected.... Knowledge acquired and shared is the Creed our racing family lives by. 

So, thanks for letting me be a member of the most unique family in the world!!

Lynda

[oz]

There was a shop in Mad Max1 and on the wall it read "Speed is just a question of money how fast do you want to go"  but if you count knowledge as having value, the salt is as close as you are going to get to your very own gold mine. KIP

[racergeo]

   KIP, this subject should just END with your statement above. Well said mate!!!

[oneliterlandspeed]

Dave,
To answer your question about the McBride-Moreau streamliner for sale- its not about the money or professional verse armature, for me it is about how much time is required to have a perfect car every single time I set it down on the salt. At the speed our car goes it must be as perfect as I can possibly make it, and that takes time, a lot of time. The decision to sell the car after all the years of work was painful. However with so much potential in the car it is a tremendous value. I told Tom Burkland the movie "The Bucket list" is to blame... I just have so many more things to do in life and there is just not enough time. Also thank you for the nice complement about the quality of our car.
Fast wishes to all

Terry

[Crosley]

It is not necessarily the destination , but the journey towards the destination for some folks

[Rchop]

As a newcomer to the sport of LSR, I’m surprised to see the talk against the “high dollar” teams. Part of the excitement of participating (to me) was being able to rub shoulders with the “big guys” while competing with a budget operation.

I used to listen to talk of the international absolute record challenges on the salt in the sixties when I was young… that sparked my interest. I worked on the waterfront in San Diego in the late eighties with a guy that was an SCTA starter. He was a mechanic and I was an electrician. We installed or serviced generators and he would talk about his pashion for LSR. My interest grew, but I thought I would never have the expertise to challenge a record…I still wanted to go to Bonneville. I was talking with a friend that holds several records in 2006 and told him of my desire to go to Bonneville. He said I could accompany his crew there the following summer and gave me an old rule book to get familiar with the sport. That was all it took, I had the book in my hands… I was finally gonna go.

Reading  the rule book opened my eyes wide, there were so many classes, I couldn’t believe it! You didn’t have to have unlimited funds or the expertise to mount a +300mph challenge, there were classes for  anything you wanted to race at speeds from 50mph and up. I had enough spare parts in my shop to challenge a record in a class that I felt comfortable with and I was not going as a spectator, I was going as a racer!

I firmly believe there is a place a place in the sport for everybody, high dollar or budget , fast or not so fast. The diversity of the challengers is one of the attractions.
IMHO

[Dean Los Angeles]

The fastest guy on the salt right now is Ron Main. His team is living proof of the cubic inches/cubic dollars connection. Ron has spent a ton of time working with sponsors and spending his own money to put together a world class effort.

But on the other hand, I'm not planning on running against him any time soon. You have to pick your battles. I can't ever compete in NASCAR, Indy, NHRA, etc. Not only from the lack of budget, but the lack of talent might have something to do with it.

Land speed racing is the only form of racing where you CAN set a record on a minimal budget. I set two records without spending more than a couple of nickles and our total budget for our bike was a few thousand, a couple of sponsors, and an open record.

You have to look at the competition and your budget. Why do you think there is so much interest in sidecars. A few side hack fanatics like Bob Bakker, and a bunch more looking for open records.

[fastesthonda_jim]

Hey, Dean,

Poteete is one heck of a guy.  Gracious and helpful as can be.  And frankly teaming with Main got him one heck of a car.  And I don't care how much $$ you spend, you still have to "argue" with physics.  Those two, and their crew, are not quitters as evidenced by the number of parts they've swapped out at the "Salt Flats Garage".  I mean do they sleep AT ALL during Speedweek?

And BTW (we're coming to my real point here) back in 07 my girlfriend got George and the Speed Demon by a couple of MPH when she drove the Barnyard Bearcat (that's the car with the legendary paint job) in F/GS.  So it can be done.

And the more I think about this thread, and BIG vs. leetle bucks, the more I say "Fugetaboutit!"  LSR is so cool because there are so few rules.  I mean for liners it's just two sentences, other than for safety or classification.  How cool is that?  And big bux tends to be big complex and they frequently run out of meet still thrashing in the pits while the low bux guys are running laps.

"When the flag drops the B.S. stops!"