I'd pulled it after the final flag, then it took another beat to realize that the laundry wasn't out. At 200 mph you're rolling 293 feet per second, and with the delay in human reaction time plus the time it takes for the chute to blossom, you need to jerk the handle well before the finish line. I ran 200.192 mph and pulled the cable for the parachute, which didn't open. On my first full pass, the car was still pretty lazy. By 2004, no HOT ROD magazine entry had made a pass on the Salt since Ray Brock's 181-mph run in 1957 in a Plymouth project car called "Suddenly. It's unspeakable that the magazine that spearheaded the Bonneville National Amateur Speed Trials in 1949 did not cover the 50th anniversary of that event. So it was as crushing to me as to my nitro-happy mentor when mid-'90s corporate jagoffs (Gray's term) mandated that HOT ROD turn its back on land speed racing. I read of racers such as Al Teague, Mike Cook, and Seth Hammond exercising speed for speed's sake, and their names meant more to me than any NASCAR hero or football star. Until then, I, like generations of HOT ROD readers, had experienced Bonneville only through the words and photos of Baskerville himself, who painted Utah's God-given racetrack as the historical foundation of all that's relevant and the final outpost of hot-rodding purity. I'd craved it ever since HOT ROD magazine's iconic staffer Gray Baskerville ruined me with a maiden voyage to Speed Week at the Bonneville Salt Flats in 1992. I've mastered sleep deprivation, financial ruin, and self-flagellation, so I've got the required skills for the greatest glory in all of motorsports: the donning of the crimson ball cap that marks lifetime membership in the Bonneville 200 MPH Club. I can build 820 horsepower, bangshift a Tex Racing T101 transmission, and loop a car at 100-plus mph. I know how to stay awake for 54 hours straight.
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