Land Speed Racing is the oldest and most simple of any form of racing. Point A to Point B as fast as you can. The pure speed itself is quite a rush, especially in its’ distilled form found here. But probably the coolest aspect of Land Speed Racing is that, for an amateur racer like me, it presents a level playing field [ Ha, a funny pun! Get it? Level playing field? ].
What I mean by that is that as a gear head and also as a highly competitive person, one of the things that I’ve always been interested in doing is racing. And winning. I’m not content with just showing up, I won’t be there unless I have a shot at winning.
But, I also have to work for a living and am very thankful and blessed to have a beautiful family that I like to spend time with, which leaves out the two things it takes to win in most racing series; Time and Money. This is why I don’t participate in the types of racing most people are familiar with like drag racing, open wheel, SCCA, NASCAR and so on. To me, these forms of racing have established formulae that are common and consistent for all participants with the winning team being the one that’s able to find that last 1% of an advantage over the others. Time and Money are spent in huge quantities in testing and testing and more testing and all that testing is designed to find that last fraction of a percent of an advantage over the competition, so you can win.
But there’s no testing in Land Speed Racing and there’s no formulae. Everybody has their own thoughts and ideas and theories about what it takes to go faster, and because there’s no established formulae, and no way to test other then at the race itself, everyone has a shot at winning.
I would absolutely love it if McLaren F1 and Penske Racing and Hendrick Motorsports all formed Land Speed Racing teams and brought them to Bonneville because it would give little guys like me the chance to hand them their asses on a platter. I don’t care how much money and time and engineering talent they have. I and everyone else that races at Bonneville still have a legitimate shot at beating them. You hear that Dennis? Roger? Rick? I only have two words for you wimps; Bring It!
Our team goals are to have our car, The Spectre Performance Infidel become the fastest gasoline powered wheel driven machine on the face of the earth [ 370 MPH ] and then to drive the car at 400 MPH. If those goals are met then we’ll look at switching to fuel to go even faster, but for now, that’s what we hope to accomplish.
