Jean Turner | April 20, 2018
Survival At 343.7 MPH
Land-speed racers Valerie Thompson and Denis Manning describe the desire and risk within the dangerous world of speed.
Valerie Thompson was quiet as she surveyed the crash site, sliding her hand along the top of the wrecked Team 7 Racing streamliner in mute contemplation. Minutes earlier she had been pulled from the wreckage after a violent crash at 343.7 mph on the salt at Lake Gairdner in South Australia during the World Speed Trial Australia.
“We have the car ready if you want to go,” said a team member. Valerie quietly shook her head, not taking her eyes from skinned-up “Bub 7” streamliner. Amid the rescue crews, course workers and team members that scurried around the scene, Thompson was calm. She paused for the occasional hug with teammates and officials, who appeared more shaken than she was, but she remained focused on the scene, trying to piece together exactly what went wrong.
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PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEAN TURNER
For Denis Manning, team leader and builder of the “Bub 7 streamliner,” he immediately saw what went right as he approached the crash site. “All the safety stuff we designed worked,” he declared after an initial look at the wreck.
Manning and the Team 7 Racing crew were awash with relief to see Thompson on her feet, and couldn’t help but marvel at how flawlessly the streamliner had performed in the crash. Parachutes had automatically deployed, the carbon-composite monocoque frame was flensed by the violent tumble, but firmly in tact, and no fuel had spilled. Aside from a small gash on her shin, Thompson was nearly unscathed.
“She walked away,” Manning said. “That’s the victory.”
What Happened?
“Today didn’t go as planned,” said Thompson. Several hours after the crash, she was still in a pensive state, yet willing to talk about the incident. “It doesn’t feel very good. But at 343 miles per hour, standing here talking to you is pretty, truly amazing.
“Everything happened in slow motion,” she recalled. “Even though the engine was revving, I remember it being—quiet. I don’t remember being upside down, not one time.”
Thompson reported she did not lose consciousness during the incident, but admits she doesn’t have a clear picture of what happened. “I blanked out,” Thompson said. “Once it was tipping over, I said to myself, ‘Oh shit! I’m in trouble.’ I knew I was in trouble. I knew everything was in trouble. I just remember holding my hands into myself so tight. Pretty much after that—it’s all she wrote. It was a slide to the finish line!”
After coming to a stop, Thompson described her immediate reaction: “I remember wiggling my toes and my fingers and I said, ‘Okay, I can get out now.’ Then the thought process was, ‘I gotta see the machine. I gotta get out to see what I did.’ That didn’t happen very well, but I did get out with some help from the fire crew. Bless their hearts, the rescue crew.”
Aside from the streamliner’s telemetry, the team has limited data to review, as the cameras that were mounted inside don’t appear to have captured the incident. “We had three cameras in the cockpit, and all three cameras in the impact, there’s no data. There’s no video. And that’s too bad,” Thompson said. “We’re hoping that we can get somebody to retrieve the data, because that will tell us a lot.”
The final impact point on the course, in particular, revealed just how violent the accident was.
“I did that?” Thompson exclaimed with a gasp as she viewed the deep red crater in the salt of Lake Gairdner, over a half-mile from the point where the Bub 7 slid to a halt. The bright red skid mark that led all the way to the crash site started several hundred feet down the course, indicating how far the 21-foot, 1600-pound streamliner bounced.
Thompson viewed the scattered and broken pieces, studying the tire marks and red paint on the salt, trying to reconstruct the series of events. Despite a slight limp, and the bandage on her shin growing increasingly red from the gash underneath it, Thompson helped clean up the pieces of the shattered streamliner alongside the course workers, mindful of the other racers waiting to take to the track.
“Crashes happen,” she said, “The crashes get bigger when you get faster. It’s dangerous. There’s no room for error. And I might have made one of the biggest errors I probably have ever made.”
But whether or not the accident was through any fault of her own remains to be determined. The team won’t know much until the Bub 7 returns stateside for a full investigation by the team.
“People are making their own assumptions and that’s fine, but until we really see that bike…that will give us 10-times more feedback. Because do I want to know? Absolutely. I want to know! [laughs] I even want to go to a hypnotist and find out if I can remember!”
Upon returning home to Scottsdale, California, Valerie Thompson quickly discovered her “crash heard ‘round the world” had placed her directly in the limelight. Her sensational wreck was the subject of several local news broadcasts. Despite giving several interviews in the next few weeks, her own memory of it hasn’t returned, but video of the crash surfaced, which proved to be rather shocking to see.
“My heart skipped a few beats,” Thompson said watching of the video. “I didn’t know it was that violent, to be honest.
The frustrating blank spots and discernible lament that occupy Thompson’s mind are underscored by feelings of relief, a sentiment shared with the team. “I’m going to say that bike saved my life,” she said. “There’s no way around it.”
The irony is that Team 7 Racing has been told in the past that the monocoque carbon-fiber design of the Bub 7 streamliner wasn’t safe. “We couldn’t enter Speed Week at the Bonneville Salt Flats,” Thompson explained. “They wouldn’t allow our bike because it doesn’t have a roll bar and ‘it’s not safe enough. It doesn’t qualify for our specs.’ Well, maybe you should now take a look at our specs because at 340 miles per hour I crashed it and I’m walking away from it. What person’s ever done that before?”
The Dark Side of Design
Denis Manning has been involved in land speed racing for more than 50 years. No name is more synonymous with the quest for speed on two-wheels. In that experience comes the grave knowledge of what can go wrong in the attempt. Only hours after the crash, as his “lucky number 7” streamliner was being wheeled into the trailer behind him, Manning sat down to talk about the complex world of designing for speed. The normally animated 72-year old sighed as he gazed at the shimmering white expanse of Lake Gairdner, and began to talk about what he calls “the black side.”
“There’s this black and white world of design,” Manning said. “The enthusiasm and the optimistic side of you says, ‘We’re going to do it like this, and it’s going to work. Aerodynamics, horsepower, handling, the rider, everything will work.’ But then it’s hard for a person who has that line of thought to show himself the black side. That’s what I call it, the black side—the other side. The black side is one that is arbitrary, you want to plan for the very worst; you’re very happy if you survive it, and that’s the flipside.
“Everybody around here right now is very sad, and sorry and condolences. Yeah. It’s a lot of money, a lot of work, a lot of help, a lot of everything. It’s not down the drain because it worked. She walked away from it and that’s everything.”
Video Crash Sequence by BonnevilleStories.com
Team 7 Racing made the trek from the United States to the remote location of Lake Gairdner seeking to set a new FIM World Record for all-time two-wheel speed. (The current record sits at 376.363 mph, held by Rocky Robinson and Mike Akatiff’s ACK Attack streamliner.) Manning has held the record four times, and lost it four times. “I want it back. Real bad,” Manning had said at the opening day of the event. At that point, the team’s spirits were at an all-time high. The day before, at the DLRA (Dry Lake Racers Association) Speed Week, which was held at the same location directly preceding the FIM-sanctioned World Speed Trials Australia, Valerie Thompson set a speed of 328.467 mph, a personal best for Thompson.
The feat was all the more impressive upon realizing that Thompson made the pass using only three of four gears, and only firing on three of four cylinders.
“When I did set that record, there’s a lot of things that went wrong inside my cockpit,” Thompson said. “I was in third gear, my computer screen was flashing in and out, I was in third gear and on three cylinders so it was on the rev limiter the whole time. So I was on three and three!” [laughs]
The team addressed the issues the next day, and when they finally headed to the starting line with all four gears and cylinders firing, they were prepared for some great results.
“It’s interesting, it’s what I live for, is to be in a perfect situation and you’re two hours away from history,” Manning said. “I’ve been there so many times where there’s been a problem, or crashes, had those motor problems, had those, just problems—problems. But I’ve also been there when the down run was good and you had to turn around and come back. [Streamliners are given a turnaround time of two hours to make their return run for an official FIM World Record. –Editor] So I always think of the situation this morning as, okay we’re two hours away from history.”
The history they made, however, wasn’t the record they were looking for. Still, they might have a record for wrecking at the highest speed in two-wheel history (and walking away).
What Now?
It all begs the question: Is this the end for the Bub 7 streamliner?
“I get more emotional about it now,” said Thompson. “That streamliner, seeking that record, the dream for the Team 7 Racing. We don’t know what the next step is. The next step is what do we do now? How do we rebuild? How do we recover from all this?”
There’s no doubt in Thompson’s mind as to whether or not she wants to get back into the cockpit of the Bub 7 streamliner. “Absolutely,” she replied. “I’ll find a way. We will find a way. And I don’t want to be without my team. I love them. They’re amazing. They sacrifice a lot just like we all do and they know we’re right there. And I think that’s the big reason they want to keep going. We’re right there. It’s at our fingertips. We just need a perfect world and a perfect day. We need the right wind and the right track. We got the horsepower. Now we need a new body. We need to get this motorcycle back on its wheels.”
Although Manning’s history on the salt spans all the way back to On Any Sunday, when he and driver Cal Rayborn set a two-wheel land-speed world record in 1970 (yes, that was him!), Manning isn’t sure how easy it will be to bounce back five decades later.
“I’m not kidding myself,” Manning said. “I’m getting advanced in age and so the question is, can I do it again? And the sad answer right now is I don’t know. I’m tired, I hurt, I got all these maladies, and I’m not real happy with it, but I still have that spirit in me. I still want it. Give me a couple months on my ranch at home and let’s see.” CN