FEATURE: Shooting for one good run

ROGER MORONEY
The Bonneville Salt Flats. A clear morning in August with no wind. Just a big blue canopy of sky over a disappearing horizon of blazing white.
Chris Harris looked on as his son Lincoln prepared to make the run that would either see them earn a place in the record books or go all the way back home to New Zealand with nothing in the ledger except "if only".
Chris had seen it happen before. Get so close then have the whole deal go sour. As it did three years earlier in the American summer of 2003.
Their preparation had been exacting and demanding and everything "felt right" that year. They had built a good engine - based on a Ford 351 and with the sort of heads, crank, valves and rod modifications which the howling Nascar racers boast.
Lincoln was familiar with the car and the course as they lined up that year, having got his crucial speed licences back in 2001.
"It was a learning experience for him," Chris said of the 2001 campaign.
"He did several runs down the course to build himself up." As Lincoln explained, going fast on the salt flats was not simply a case of going up through the gears and planting your foot hard down on the pedal and holding it there.
The flats may be smooth but the surface moves the way it would if you tried to get 700-odd horsepower down on a sandy beach.
"It'll wheelspin at 200 mph (321km/h) ... it'll drift," he said.
It was a case of gently does it, build up the speed deftly and cautiously.
Advised by his old man, and taking in the vagaries of running fast on the flats, Lincoln proved a quick learner. Quick enough to put in a couple of 200mph runs, with a best of 208mph (334km/h).
All up, his average was about 20mph short of the world record for the C-Gas Roadster class they were running in. It doesn't sound much but it's huge. Finding horsepower to grab some of those mph back wasn't easy, especially when there were something like a dozen American teams also gunning for the C-GR class record.
But it was encouraging, and in 2003 the encouragement continued. Because as Lincoln rolled the 780 horsepower roadster out into line for his second run his mind went back to the previous day and the opening run (they must do two to create an average which becomes their overall competitive time).
As Burt Munro did so famously, and which has been well chronicled in the film The World's Fastest Indian, the Harris family raised hundreds of American eyebrows. They'd come from a place called Hawke's Bay in far-away Noo Zeeland, and on their first run on the Saturday bagged a speed through the fifth mile mark of 230.3mph (370km/h) - quicker than the record.
"Straight off the bat!" Chris recalled with pride. "It was fantastic and the word got around among the US boys on their own turf that the Kiwis were here."
But, as Chris lamented, there are no sure things in motor-racing. Their fate, and record aspirations for that matter, had been sealed in the final stages of that first run. A valve had dropped and holed a piston.
But there was still a glimmer of hope because the engine had stayed together.
"Normally when that happens it's total engine destruction, but the piston stayed together," Chris said.
So, with every team member crossing every last finger and toe, they disconnected the fuel injection and ignition from the dead cylinder and sent Lincoln out in a seven-cylinder V8.
"He did an unbelievable 213mph (342km/h) on seven cylinders," Chris said, adding that the two times gave them an average just 5mph short of the world C-GR class record. Close - but still no cigar - and a stark case of "if only".
"Hence the determination to return," Chris said with a smile.
And so it was that they returned to the salt flats for the 2006 speed-week event hosted by the Southern California Timing Association.
They had intended to go last year but record snowfalls and thaw on the nearby mountains, followed by heavy rains, washed out the event after two days, but not before it claimed the life of one of Chris' good friends.
When they arrived this year they were greeted by smiling faces. The smiling, satisfied faces of the "old salts", the veterans of speed who looked out across the clear flats and tapped away with the toes of their boots at what was a perfect surface.
"Some were saying it was the best in recent history," Chris said.
"We had a good feeling about it," his wife, Lesley, said as they prepared again to watch the son finish the unfinished business the old man had started back in 1988.
Her husband, and now her sons' pursuit of speed has never been easy for Lesley. Not after seeing what happened to Chris back then, when his car lifted and flipped and he crashed at high speed.
"I wanted that record but I was too aggressive. I was pig-headed and pushed too hard," Chris said.
"The car was just too light. It was a bad-news deal." That was the year of the 40th national speed week, and the team made a determined pact that they would go back for the 50th in 1998.
Which they did, although Lesley confessed she "hated the place".
"She was not happy," Chris said.
"But she knew we would do it."
Drag racer Willie White ran the car that year, but they returned home empty-handed.
So there they were last month on their fifth visit to Bonneville, and the third tilt at the C-GR world record. About 500 cars and motorcycles were on the flats, and getting a good time to run was crucial.
On the Saturday, Lincoln made the decision to run early the next day, but joined the big Saturday queue anyway, pulling out when it came close to his turn to run. But he effectively kept his place, which meant when the course was closed for the day he would be among the first to run in the cooler air of Sunday morning.
"We got to run at 9.45 the next morning. It was reasonably cool but 11mph crosswinds had come up," Chris said.
While that may not sound like much, it did prevent Lincoln applying the power he wanted over the first three miles and the car began weaving.
But for the fourth and fifth miles he got the hammer down. Lincoln, using the tachometer as a guide, knew he'd gone fast and was delighted to be told he had exceeded the existing 226mph record by half a mile an hour.
"It felt good but we had to run the next day to back it up," he said.
The car went into impound where they could work on it for four hours before the next morning's run.
"That's where the Burt Munro thing comes into it," Chris smiled.
"Like the name of the book about him, you need just one good run."
The next morning dawned fine and clear. And no wind. The omens got better when the officials moved the course onto fresh salt. No other tracks to contend with.
The team, bolstered by expat Kiwis living in the US, towed the car down to the starting point and plugged an oil pre-heating cable in from an RV to get the big engine's prime lubrication temperature up.
That alone was indicative of the team's attention to every detail.
"You do it properly or you don't do it. You don't shortcut on anything," Chris said.
There were six cars ahead of Lincoln, so the team left him with his thoughts and drove to the four mile mark to watch the run.
Pushed off, Lincoln fed the power in, running as close to centre as he could between the black parallel lines, 66 feet apart, which marked the course.
"All I was focused on were the mile markers. I just aimed between those. The biggest thing is the wind noise. It roars because you're sitting up with your head in it. It gets pushed back into padding behind you. You just keep pushing."
And push he did.
Going through second and third gears, the car began to fishtail slightly.
"It takes a while for the car to react when you steer it. You have to ease it back into line carefully."
At the three-mile mark, Lincoln "locked it in". Watching as the howling hot-rod approached, Chris' nerves began rattling. He had been so close to a record before and expected something to go wrong.
"We could see him and hear him coming. It sounded good but I was listening for something else. I was listening for a misfire," he said.
But there was none and Lincoln, foot hard down, flashed through the fifth marker, ran another mile, then deployed the chute and closed down the engine.
"It was in our lap," Chris said.
"It was absolutely perfect."
The timekeepers confirmed a new name would be entered in the record book that day.
Lincoln had gone through at 231.426mph, for a new record average of 229.308.
They had broken a record that had been held (in American hands) for 10 years.
When they got to Lincoln, they could see he already knew.
"It was just awesome," he said. "Awesome."
"We were just crying our eyes out," Lesley said. Their boy, safe and sound, climbed from the car and joined the celebrations.
As well as grabbing a world speed record, he also became the first New Zealander to be inducted into the "200mph Club".
And that, you would think, would be that. Unfinished business finished. A long-held dream a reality.
But this is where Chris and Lincoln's faces light up and where Lesley rolls her eyes, accompanied with a smile of resignation.
"In 2008 it's the 60th nationals," Chris pointed out.
"We are close already to the B-class record. We've got the engine, it just needs a bigger bore and new pistons to take it from 370 cubic inch to 439. We'd be in."
And so they will go back in two years. Either to have a crack at the B-Class roadster world record or go back and re-take the C-Class one if someone dares take it off them in the meantime.
It would round out 20 years of racing at the iconic salt flats for Chris and that would make him a happy and satisfied man.
He may have lost the use of his legs back in'88 but the focused and inspirational man never lost his thirst for accelerating to the top of the world.
Devotion and passion?
If you could run a car on what Chris and his team possess then you'd have every record in the book.