Quiet day before the big push18 | 08 | 2011
SPEED SCOTLAND WILL make one final push to become 1000cc World Land Speed Recordbreakers tomorrow. The team, ravaged by bad luck which as destroyed a series of engines and gearboxes, is set to risk everything on the Bonneville Salt Flats.
With it's Streamliner car, Flower of Scotland, fitted with a newly-rebuilt engine and gearbox, driver Rick Pearson will make one last assault on the current 313mph record.
Here Rick gives his thoughts on a day dominated by technical delays and which ended with frustrating news … and a cold beer!
Dateline — Wednesday, August 17, 2011
After blowing the second motor/gearbox yesterday on a 190mph pass, we're running low on bits. So taking the bottom end of the engine I blew on the final day of Speedweek in 2010, and the top end of the engine I destroyed the gearbox in on Sunday, our engine maestro, Terry "Mr Turbo" Kaiser built us a third engine/gearbox combo today.
We knew when we left the UK that there were question marks over the transmissions and we had stronger ones ordered. However, unfortunately a sponsor's cheque never arrived and we were unable to take delivery.
Another weary day for Speed Scotland on the Salt
There are always times in Land Speed Racing where more cash makes a big difference, but making do is very much the Spirit of the Salt. And as one team learned on Sunday when their "unbreakable" rear end on their car (which was supposed to cost $35,000) broke on the first pass, nothing is indestructible on the "Great White Dyno", as it's known.
So our cobbled together engine was dropped into the Flower and although we had one hour left of track time before lanes closed for the night, the wind was marginal and crew chief Derek Palmer once again called "No Joy" and stopped us running.
Since he broke this news to me by handing me a cold beer, I forgave him quickly! We have all day tomorrow to run what may well be our final pass of 2011, and it's been decided that I will get to run the Flower as hard as possible.
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We're not worrying about the licensing situation, we just want to prove that she is indeed a 300mph car, or as near as makes no difference.
It'll be a steep learning curve and I'm not expecting to sleep well tonight. But that to be honest is mostly excitement rather than fear, although undoubtedly it'll be a reasonably terrifying experience. But given every pass in the Flower ranks as "pretty scary" that's not a huge leap for me!
It's Hail Mary time.
Fingers crossed, think fast and safe thoughts for us please.
Rick Pearson
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