Worms to Catch

by Guy Martin

  It was heading towards Saturday dinnertime, and different causes were being guessed at. There was talk of best-case scenarios. Some problems could be fixed relatively easily, others might bugger us up for days. At the very best, we’d lost the day. There were only three to go, and who knew what the weather was going to do?

  A good hour after getting back to the pits, we found out that the driveshaft had snapped, where a spline has been welded to a shortened shaft. Crazy Dave knew someone in Salt Lake City, 120 miles away, who could weld it. We – me, Matt and Dave – got in the rental Charger and set off. Dave’s mate was a bloody brilliant welder. He told Matt that the shaft wasn’t the steel he was told it was.

  It was early evening when we got back to Wendover and I walked down to Carmen’s Black and White Bar, the place I’d been told about. It’s a wooden building, definitely nothing fancy. It looks like a big shed that’s been painted white and it has no windows. You’d never find it if you weren’t looking for it, as it’s down a backstreet with mobile homes parked around it. It doesn’t look promising, but you walk in and see the walls covered with posters and photos of Bonneville racers. It’s run by Carmen, a women in her sixties, who is the only person who works there. Sally was there with Sideburn editor Gary Inman, who’d also travelled out to see what was going on. I had a bottle of beer as I looked at the photos, then Mike Cook came in. Carmen made me a cup of tea and I talked to Mike for an hour. He’d never raced a bike, but I could ask him loads of questions about the salt and how machines behaved out on it. He told me that if I ran off the track I didn’t have to panic, I just had to steer back on. I walked back to the hotel with Sal and Gary. Sal wanted something to eat so we stopped at the Subway, next to the petrol station where I had breakfast, but I still couldn’t bring myself to eat there after having so many on the Tour Divide.

  The next morning we were out at the pits at 6.30 as usual. The bike was nearly back together, and I thought we’d be ready to go as soon as the helicopter landed, but we hardly ever were. If Mark McCarville, the foreman from the TAS team, were here the team would work as long as it took after we finished riding to be ready to go the next morning, but this lot seemed to leave a load of jobs for the next morning. I couldn’t understand it, but I kept my nose out. I’m sure there was a good reason.

  I wasn’t being impatient, but I had a lot to learn about the land speed job, and the best way to learn is by riding the thing – seat time, as the Americans put it. Before too long everything was bolted together and ready to tow up again. I didn’t have any shoes on, because room was so tight in the nose that I was having a bit of a struggle to comfortably get my foot on the brake pedal. I wanted to ride in just my socks, but Matt made me wear driving boots.

  At the far end of the track the stabilisers were bolted back on. They were adjusted so the stabilisers’ wheels were off the floor, like they were on the towing runs. They were there just to catch me if I tipped over. First gear needed to be engaged by hand, so the side panel was removed, then fitted back in place with about 20 screws. I started the engines, got the thumbs up and set off.

  Like anything on two wheels, the streamliner is at its least stable at slow speeds, so I’m on the little wheels of the retractable landing gear legs till I get up to 30 mph, then I’m balanced.

  Unsurprisingly, the controls are different to a regular bike. I have two handles or joysticks, I suppose, bolted to either side of the cockpit, next to my thighs. They’re aeroplane grips and just move forwards and backwards, not side to side. I twist the throttle, as normal, but it’s vertical, not horizontal. The brake is operated by a foot pedal – there is no hand lever. On the grips I have two buttons to change gear, one each for up and down. I have two more buttons, up and down for landing gear.

  I have a MoTeC dash, with loads of information on it, but I’m only looking at speed. If anything happens to oil pressure, oil temperature or water temperature, it’ll flash warning lights at me, so I don’t have to be reading the numbers.

  I accelerated steadily away, short shifting before the turbo boost came in. Behind me, out of my line of sight, all the cars were following. I had a radio earpiece and I could just about hear, and talk to, Matt.

  From mile seven to mile five and a half the streamliner’s wheels were following ruts, like a car follows truck’s ruts on a worn-out motorway, but I could control it. I also had double-vision when the canopy was fitted. I was seeing two of every mile marker, so I closed one eye.

  The Triumph felt like Nige – pulling on the lead so hard it’s strangling itself, as all it wants to do is run faster. The first run went without a bother. It was so easy it was a bit boring. I felt confident to go faster, but I was there to jump through all the hoops that the Bonneville authorities put in front of me, and I had to prove I could safely handle the bike at certain speeds before moving to the next speed, so I kept it close to 80. I was doing 3,200 rpm in third gear.

  James, the electronics man, confirmed that I actually touched 92 mph, and I wanted to go again, but the streamliner needed checking. The side panels were taken off and the belly tanks where the radiators were mounted in tanks of water were removed to have their temperatures checked.

  Mike Cook, who followed behind on every run I did in the practice week, told the team that he’d never seen anyone get to grips with balancing as quickly as I did, but 90 mph is not 400 mph, so I wasn’t getting too excited. Then the wind got up. Mike won’t let any record bikes run on his track in more than a 4 mph crosswind, and this was all of 10 mph, so the rest of the day was a write-off. We were making progress, but I just wanted to keep riding the thing. I did a bit of filming with the TV lot then got back to the hotel to work on this book.

  I was in the pits raring to go at 6.30 on Monday morning. We only had two more days of testing and I hadn’t even been over 100 mph yet. I’d been faster than that pedalling a pushbike along a Welsh beach. Then, when I thought we were finally going to do the run, I was told I would have to practise getting in and out of the cockpit, so I knew what to do in an emergency. Why didn’t we practise this the day before when the wind was too high to do anything else?

  I did need the practice emergency exit, though. My first attempt wasn’t very good – I was rushing and got my legs stuck. It made me remember that I had to get out from under the dashboard one leg at a time. Everyone was happy with my next attempt, so the bike, still suspended above the salt in its frame, could be pushed on to the track, lowered, tied to the truck and pulled to mile seven.

  This was supposed to be my 120 mph run, but Matt said I could take it to 150 and no one would complain. This would be my second power run, and the first without the stabilisers. I started the engines, moved 20 feet and the engines stalled. Everyone ran out to the bike and took the panels off while I stayed in the cockpit, helmet on, canopy off. It wasn’t a quick fix so I eventually climbed out. One motor started but the other sounded like it had a flat battery. James and Ed thought it might be mechanical. I didn’t think it was, because it petered out like it had run out of petrol. When the laptop was plugged in it told us that a cam sensor wasn’t reading, but we didn’t know if that was because something had broken and damaged it, or not.

  We towed the bike back to base and the team started investigating. I wasn’t getting frustrated – I just wondered what it was. It turned out just to be a cam sensor problem, and in an hour the bike was running properly, with the same sensor. I was surprised they didn’t swap it while they had the chance, but the bike seemed to be running alright. Luckily, the weather hadn’t changed for the worse, so we headed back to mile seven. From there it was impossible to see the pits, and if anyone needed anything it was a 12-mile round trip to fetch it.

  This time everything went according to plan. I was riding with one eye, because of the double vision. I had been swapping eyes during the practice towing runs, but it took too long for the other eye to focus, so I just kept one closed.

  When I set off it felt like the wind got me and I couldn’t get
it balanced, so I left the landing gear legs down longer than normal till I got it right. Mark started shouting down the radio, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying, so I stopped. He was telling me the legs weren’t up, but I knew that. Just leave me to it.

  After going through the starting procedure again I set off, and this time I got settled quickly. I looked at the speedo expecting to see 60 and I was already doing 120 mph, the maximum I was supposed to do, but Matt had already said I could do 150. Next thing I knew I was doing 180, 190 – it came so easy – so I thought, Let’s see what it’ll do. There was no sensation of speed, which was why it could feel boring. The team had set a rev limit, electronically, which stopped me revving the bike as hard as I wanted. This was the first time I tested the parachutes. I released them in the order Matt told me: right hand release first, then left. This deploys the big one first.

  The convoy of cars caught up. James plugged in the laptop and confirmed the speed, 219 mph. It felt like we were getting somewhere now. We weren’t doing two-way runs or speeds over a timed mile yet, just recording peak speeds, and at 219 I felt I could have had one hand off the controls, smoking a cigarette. Everyone was keen to get the bike ready for another run, and everything was checked within an hour.

  It wasn’t long before I was towed out to the seven-mile marker again, and the rev limit had been increased a bit. Again, everything went smoothly with the start-up procedure and launching off, but it didn’t stay that way for long. At close to 200 mph the bike got out of shape, and the whole thing was fishtailing. It was moving so much I was nearly looking out the side of window. I thought it was going on its side. I was in a hell of a wobble, but the more I fought it, the calmer it got. It’s the opposite on a TT bike – if you hang too tightly on to one of them when it’s tankslapping, it sends the movement to you, and it gets worse and chucks you off. In the streamliner I locked my knees under my arms, which calmed it down, and it came in line again. I lost about 10 mph while I was fighting it, then I gathered my thoughts and got back on the throttle to reach 256 mph. I had now gone faster than Jason DiSalvo had gone in the Triumph.

  I was on the throttle non-stop for 20 seconds, but the engine was still hitting a limiter and not letting me go any faster. I rolled the throttle at mile three because I was bored of sitting at 256. Mike Cook had turned the big mile-marker numbers that line either side of the track around so I knew where I was. It’s deceiving how far the pit camp is away. I got to the two-mile marker, so one mile from the pits, before pulling the parachute. By now I’d been told to use the small one first, the opposite of what I was told at first. Then I got everything settled, going down a couple of gears, giving it a bit of brake, and then at 40 mph I pressed the button to get the landing-gear legs down.

  The TV lot’s on-board cameras had caught the action, and you could see the horizon tipping from side to side as the streamliner fishtailed. The team looked at it and Matt didn’t know what was causing it, but I could see his gears turning as I was talking to him. He was coming up with different ideas, and I liked the way he was thinking.

  He reckoned it could be the rear tyre. It had quite a square shape and he thought I might have rolled off the edge of it, and that put it in a weave. He asked the team to fit a bigger tail fin to help stability and called it a day.

  The wobble didn’t make me want to stop riding it, but I planned to wear the OMP helmet with the HANS device now. HANS stands for Head and Neck Support. The helmet is tethered to a shoulder harness that limits how much the head can move forward or back in relation to the body, and should stop injuries from whiplash movements. A lot of car-racing series, including F1, have made them compulsory, and I was used to riding the thing by now, so I didn’t need the familiarity of the AGV any more. I wanted the added safety of a helmet with a HANS device, and bike helmets don’t have the screw holes to fit one to.

  I headed back to the hotel to keep working on the book. I began to wonder how many boys had been killed doing the land speed job and, for the first time in my life, started seriously thinking about writing a will. If it does go on its side at 250 mph, what’s it going to do? It’s going to get messy. Matt said that the streamliner’s body had been built to withstand 50 g, but I haven’t. I wasn’t the only one who thought it might be dangerous. I heard that the insurance policy to cover me for the attempt cost over £60,000.

  When it got wild, I realised how fast it was going. For each go on the flats, I was towed away from the pits and then I made the run back towards them, but after the wobble I got uncomfortable with the thought of heading back towards the pits. If I lost control, who was I going to plough into? I’d rather head towards Floating Mountain, in the east, so if I lost control I wouldn’t crash into anything. Matt wanted me to keep doing it how we had all week, running from the Floating Mountain end of the course, because he reckoned the salt was soft between miles one and two and it would affect acceleration. I couldn’t tell the difference between hard and soft salt when I was in the thing, but it tried to follow ruts, and if it did I had to go with it.

  Tuesday started the same way as usual: cheap porridge in the Shell station and ten minutes’ drive out to the salt. The helicopter landed 100 metres from the pits at seven, while the team were doing their morning pre-ride checks. It was 9 August, and the last day of testing. We didn’t know if the taller tailfin was going to make any difference to stability, but there was only one way to find out.

  The mood was different. Everything was a bit quieter after the previous day’s wobble. When I climbed into the cockpit to be towed out, Sal came up to me and said, ‘Go steady.’ I laughed and reminded her that I wasn’t here to go steady.

  They towed me out to just beyond the seven-mile marker this time. It always felt bumpy and rough as hell when I was being towed out, but the faster the streamliner went, the smoother it became. The front end has three fancy, Superbike-spec Öhlins TTX shocks to damp it, and they seemed to work better at speed.

  This was the 250 mph run, but, as usual, I wanted to go faster. The run was smoother than the previous day’s. The streamliner was still following ruts, but I could deal with it. I was always tweaking the steering, using the horizon as the guide, keeping that dead level. The machine wasn’t talking to me – I wasn’t getting any feedback. It was all visual. I changed gear when the light came on, and the traction control was looking after itself. It sounds easy, but it isn’t. Nothing went wrong, but it didn’t reach the speeds I wanted it to.

  I pulled the parachute at two miles and coasted to a stop a couple of hundred metres from the pits. The recorded speed was 274.2 mph. Matt seemed pleased enough, and there were no big wobbles this time. Triumph were happy because it meant the new streamliner was their fastest ever, and had something to tell people. The top-speed record we broke was set in 1966, by Bob Leppan in Gyronaut X-1, with two air-cooled, bored-out 650 Meriden twins, so if we couldn’t go faster than that, with 50 years of technological advances, two turbos and twice the cylinder capacity behind us, there was something badly wrong. That’s why, for me at least, it was just a step to where we wanted to be and not much more. We want to break Ack Attack’s world land speed record, and that stands at a two-way average of 376.363 mph, over 100 mph faster than the Triumph streamliner has ever been. The team, and Triumph, want to be the first bike over 400 mph. I was happy enough. We’d moved in the right direction all week, and once we went over 230 mph it was all into the unknown for the team.

  I did want another run, to try to go over 300 mph, but Nik from Triumph wasn’t keen and Matt agreed, explaining that there wasn’t a lot of point putting more miles on the streamliner because we wouldn’t learn much from going just 26 mph faster. The first thing I have to do at the record meeting, whenever that will be, is to do a 300 mph run in front of the FIM, the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme, to prove I can do it, but it would’ve been good for my own peace of mind to know I had done over 300 mph before we packed it in. Having said that, it was trick being out there, being invol
ved with something with this much planning and effort behind it. I am honoured that Triumph chose me, but it’s not going to be plain sailing. Mark is concerned about the state of the salt. He made it clear that everything has to be perfect to have any chance of breaking the record. He explained that if I get wheelspin during acceleration on a record run I should just park it, wait for the tow truck, go back to the beginning and try again. If it’s not a perfect run, don’t bother burning fuel.

  We had a team meeting before we left. Matt said he was going to look for newer tyres, to see if that was the cause of the fishtailing. The data showed that the engines need more fuel to make the power for a record run, but the standard coils that were fitted weren’t man enough to deliver a spark that could ignite the additional fuel, so they have to fit different coils. We said our goodbyes, not knowing when we’d be back. Matt was going to travel back to Bonneville within the week to see if he thought the salt would be good enough for the attempt that was planned for late August, but he didn’t seem hopeful.

  With that one and only run on Tuesday, we were all done before nine in the morning on the last day, so the TV lot had me visit Wendover’s little library to do some bits for the programme, before I went back to the hotel to do some more work on the book. I was flying home the next day, but I still had one more thing to do on Bonneville Salt Flats first.

  CHAPTER 19

  Clinging on for grim death, sawing at the steering wheel to keep it in a straight line

  AFTER ANOTHER NIGHT in Wendover’s Montego Bay hotel I walked over the road to have porridge in the petrol station, before heading out to the salt flats for the last time on this week-long trip. The Triumph lot had packed up the day before and headed off to jet-wash the crusted salt that was blathered all over their hire cars and camper vans, hoping to avoid getting stung with the $1,000 fines the hire companies had hidden in their small print. Everyone was happy enough with how things had gone, but more work had to be done on the streamliner.