Mike, Dave and Louie had worked hard on Thursday. The setup of the pit area was completed and the car went through tech so Friday was to be an easy mark. No runs are allowed until Saturday morning so Mike meant this to be a day to allow everyone to get reacquainted and not have to rush in and go straight to work. He had a few things he wanted done but nothing major.

Mark Gallagher had arrived Thursday evening and he and Louie and Dave spent the night in Dave’s camper on the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land surrounding the Salt Flats.

Friday morning the 9 of us from South Carolina set out at 3:30 am to go to the airport in Charlotte. We were excited and the flight went well and on-time. I think it was first time any of us had flown since COVID-19 changed our world. The flight was maybe half full with middle seats left vacant. You really could tell the airport and airline were taking many precautions. We sure did wear those masks all the way through.

Meanwhile Louis McRae was travelling with his Airstream camper from Denver. He sent several texts and was passing through Salt Lake City about the same time we landed. He went all the way to the campground and got set up before we saw him on the salt later in the afternoon.

Now the real story of the day. It wound up not being the kick-back day Mike had envisioned. On Thursday the tech inspectors included Lee Kennedy who is the chief steward in charge of all things technical. Mike and Lee had struck up a relationship while waiting to get on the salt Thursday morning.

Midday on Friday Lee revisited the pit wanting to review the suspension. Usually this would not be a good indication! However, it turned out that Lee and SCTA were looking for help. They needed test cars for the long course. This year’s long course of 9 miles has some potential roughness issues at the 3 mile mark. What they wanted was to test out this portion of the course using streamliners of two types, regular suspension and no rear suspension, as a measurement of this roughness. So they wanted each test car to allow them to push them out to the 3 mile mark with their push truck up to about 100 mph. Mike jumped at the chance (of course). So Friday afternoon we made our first pass on the salt with the streamliner, being pushed by the SCTA truck. They accelerated to about 80 mph without the car fired it up at all. We followed along to the left of the course.

Happily, our streamliner took the roughness in stride with Mike being totally comfortable with the experience. Mike’s feedback to Lee was that if we had the option we would soften the spring rates by 100 pounds but those softer springs are back in South Carolina. The bottom line is our package appears to be comfortable and manageable.

There were two “unsprung” streamliners included in the test. Both failed to negotiate the surface concerns. They both aborted their efforts with one driver complaining of blurred vision at speed and the other complaining of back discomfort.

As a special bonus, George Poteet drove out to the test area with a couple of his crew and we all stood around and talked with him for a few minutes. George, of course, has the Speed Demon streamliner with many speed records and is a legend in the world of land-speed racing.

Saturday is the first day of runs with our initial run speed limits set at 175 mph and 200 mph by Lee Kennedy and SCTA. By the day’s end we should know where we stand with the streamliner . . . still a new and untested car.