Pork Pie, Jon and list,
PP - If there is any documentation of the Motivator FIM speeds and details
of the class it ran in and who timed the attempt, who the FIM Stewrad was,
I would be most interested to see them. The current FIM Officials may be
surprised to see them too. The runs I recall were in 1976 so it must have
been after then that the FIM mathematics changed although it is unusual to
drop records from any list - but Craigs went into the bin too.
Jon - the sums of Budweiser money paid to H Needham were stated in articles
circulated in the UK as $50,000 to get the vehicle ready (hence the
recycling of another machine), $150,000 when the LSR was broken (which of
course they did not do officially anyway) and $400,000 for breaking the
Speed of Sound. When you have put up (at least) $480,000 of your own
money, what might you do to collect the final stage payment?
If the timing traps had recorded a fast enough speed would the team have
waited 10 or so hours to get radar verification? Verification that was not
wholly endorsed by the wording of the USAF statement that I have seen
reported. But this latter point is always dealt with by the comment that
the USAF were never intended to be the sanctioning body any way!
Brave drivers - Kitty O'Neill, Hal Needham and Stan Barrett - led to a red
three wheeler travelling fast on land outside any rules of land speed
record attempts. Not many people outside the team and around the world
have been convinced by Mr Needhams "new way" of making a speed record
attempt in '79/'80.
Malcolm Pittwood, Derby, England.
ps. My expectation is that the supersonic land speed record of Andy Green
will be exceeded next by a vehicle running to the FIM rules and not to the
rules of the FIA ............
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