Thrust SSC Land Speed record car in town

[Mark Nelson <mnelson@brls.com>]

Hi All!

Well, as some of you know, the battle (most say the last one) is about
to ensue over the World Speed Record here in Nevada.  Craig Breedlove
and Richard Noble just came in town today, and will be heading up to the
Black Rock Desert tomorrow.

For my dad and I personally, it has been really exciting to see today
happen.  About a month ago, my dad contacted the Thrust and Spirit of
America teams, and offered the services of his shop, should they need
it.  Noble's team immediately replied and were most grateful, and Andrew
Noble, who was staying in Gerloch (near Black Rock), came down and
visited.  They hit things off remarkably well...and began to discuss
logistics.  It turns out that the team was incredibly low on funds, and
with the help of my dad and some of his customers, they were able to get
the team uniforms from Sportif Sportswear plus $25K from Sportif, Reno
Air to fly the crew to and from San Francisco plus 5K pounds of fuel for
the car, Peppermill Hotel/Casino to put up $225K plus put the team up
for two nights at the hotel, a local Dodge dealer to provide them with
Vans and Dodge 4x4 trucks, plus a whole slew of other stuff.  To sum it
up, they now have extra money leftover, and will be able to stay a month
to set the record.

The Thrust car came in around 2:30 this afternoon at the Reno Airport,
on a big Russian Anitov carrier (biggest plane in the world), carrying
the car, two tractor-trailers, all the spare parts, the Jaguar
fire/chase vehicle, and nine crew members.  This sucker is HUGE!!  My
dad and I watched them unload it this evening, and were just in awe of
how much stuff was in side of that plane.  A rally friend of ours, Dave
Hackett, towed the Jaguar chase car, and several other volunteers moved
all of the spare parts and tools.  In case you are wondering about this
Jaguar, it was provided free to the team with around 2K pounds of safety
equipment behind the front seats and in the trunk (with all of the wood
trim still in the car mind you =).  It is the XJ12-cylinder model, and
is there to follow the car during a run, at 160MPH, to be on scene in
case of an accident, ASAP.

On the other side, with Spirit of America, no response was ever sent
back to us, after the couple of offers that were made to help the team.
As I mentioned above, Craig Breedlove came in town today, and was
actually driving the semi carrying the car.  Dave Hackett noticed
Breedlove in the parking lot, watching as the Anitov came in this
afternoon.  He went over to talk with Craig, who said they heard on the
radio that the plane was about to land, and went over to watch.  Craig
said something VERY interesting...his team is COMPLETELY strapped for
cash, and he is going to do a 350MPH run on Saturday, and if that
happens without any glitches, he is going to go for the record on Sunday
(~650 - 700 MPH).  The reason being is that they simply don't have the
$$$ to hang out.

My dad and I discussed this extensively with Jeremy Davey from Thrust
(he setup their web site, receives all the email, drives the 18-wheeler,
does whatever other odd-jobs there are), and his consensus is the same
as ours...that being that Breedlove is just going to go out there and
run the car by the seat of his pants...regardless if he kills himself or
not (which is probably the way he would want to go anyway).  Very
different approach than the Thrust team.  Their methodology is to work
up to the high speeds at VERY small increments...as little as 8 MPH, but
no greater than 50 MPH initially.  Bear in mind, that the Thrust team
wants to break the Sound Barrier (mach 1).  Jeremy also said that they
are not going to be ready to run until Sunday, for two reasons: (1) the
car won't be ready and (2) Saturday is Funeral Day, and they wouldn't
run even if it was ready (let's not get started on this again =).

Anyway, this has all been very exciting to watch and see this afternoon
and evening.  The thrust team has some of the nicest and sharpest people
I've ever met.  Andrew Noble was VERY stoked on the rally cars we had,
especially since many of their crew members are serious rally
enthusiasts/competitors.  Things have just seemed to work out remarkably
well between us all.

Basically, if Breedlove does his 350 MPH run successfully on Saturday,
my dad and I will go up Sunday to watch him shoot for the record.  For
the rest of the time, it is actually pretty boring to be a spectator for
this type of thing, as the speeds will be VERY slow to begin with (I'm
speaking about the Thrust team), as they want to make sure that they get
the quirks worked out before they start going REALLY fast.

If anyone has any questions about all this, feel free to ask.  I'm
taking photos of this whole thing, and starting next week I will start
scanning the photos if anyone is interested...btw I will also start
scanning the preliminary photos of my car (at least the pictures of
before I stripped it, and how it was hit, and what it looks like now).

cya!

-mark nelson

'90 s2 (building for SCCA Pro Rally)
'85 4ktq (10vt transplant in the works)