Page 14 February 2004

Photos courtesy of Joe Law

If Joe Law has had one recurringproblem all his racing life, it’s beengoing too dang fast. No joke. This Godfearing retired coal miner from WestVirginia builds such scorchingmachinery for the salts of Bonnevillethat he has been forced to trailer his“Grumpy Old Men” lakester severaltimes because it was simply makingtoo much power.

Like a wild beast that needed tobe kept at bay, Law recognized thatbrute strength doesn’t always translateinto safe, usable power and figuredsome head scratchin’ and chin rub-bing was in order before he broughtthe open-wheel car back to the start-ing line.

No boasting here, the guy has earnedsome enviable ‘titles’ including:

* World’s Fastest Lakester Record:349.873 C/Blown Fuel Lakester(C/BFL) Class & a 357 exit speedwhistling past the last timing lights

* World’s Fastest Gasoline PoweredVehicle (C/BGL) 337.133

* World’s Fastest Single PontiacEngine 355.833 mph, no hemi motorhere and Mickey Thompson had 4engines in his car

* World’s Fastest Rookie driver (TriciaKisner) at 325 mph who also hap-pened to be a freckled face strawberryblond engineer.

What needs to be understoodwith land speed racers is that theycarve out niches for themselves bydreaming up goals, working like crazyto achieve them and don’t care if theyever make the evening news. It’s allabout personal achievement. What’sstrange about Law’s case is that he hasbeen simultaneously wildly successfuland totally ignored by the motoringpress.

Although I’d seen the bright redlakester on the salt, these guys werealways so busy working on the carthat I chose to keep a respectful dis-tance and never got to know them.That changed when Law put TriciaKisner in the driver’s seat and she pro-ceeded to spank all the boys, all thestreamliners, all the comers at the2003 SCTA Speedweek in August by

taking Top Time of the Meet(325mph) and earning the HOT RODMagazine trophy – the first time alady has done so in more than 50years! It was time to meet these folks.

A coal miner for 20 years, Lawexplained while you do get dirty itisn’t bad job and it paid for hisMechanical Engineering Degree atFairmont State College. Now 67, hemay own the car, but Law readilyadmits that without the crew, none ofthe accomplishments would be possi-ble, “There were many that helped inone way or another and their help wasgreatly appreciated, but the maingroup is Ed Vasicek, Bud Daughertyand Sonny Slate from Fairmont WV,Dave Merashoff, Farmington, WV;Bob Beatty and Nick Raynal from Sali-nas, CA; Carl Brown, Salt Lake City,Utah.”

Land speed racing is such aremote hobby, it begs the question,“How does one get started?” I meanhow does a fellow go from bustingblack coal in tiny holes a quarter-mileunder the earth to smashing speedrecords on the expansive sparklingwhite salt beds thousands of milesaway?

It all started in 1965 when Lawtook up drag racing and spent threeyears competing with a CompetitionRoadster. The car set a Top Speed of177 mph and 8.60 elapsed time whilesetting nearly 20 national records andwinning the NHRA Spring Nationalsand US Nationals. In 1968 theyentered the car in the 1968 Winterna-tionals held in California, but brokeout against Gene Snow. “It was a longtow home,” lamented Law.

He returned in 1969 with a new Bdragster sporting an injected hemirunning on gas and earned the NHRADivision 1 Comp Eliminator Champi-onship. That car turned in a careerTop Speed of 180 and Elapsed Time of8.19 seconds, but the constant strate-gy required to be competitive quicklylost its luster for Law.

“We owned the record,” Lawpointed out, but because of the handi-capping, “We always saved a little todo better the next time out but had towatch it when running on a reallygood strip otherwise you would breakout and be disqualified.” When the 70’s rolled in, pal Jim Min-

nick gave Law a 496” late model hemiand the car ran in Top Gas class. “Wequalified everywhere,” recalled Law,

“But never won anything because wewere in a 1⁄4 race with a great 1/8-milecar. Our single engine competedagainst double engine cars that wouldpass us about 100 feet from thelights.” Disillusioned, when the sea-son closed, he sold the car and playedwith real estate for a while.

It was 15 years later, in the com-pany of Miss Suzanne Belch, that Lawfirst crunched salt beneath his feet.Driving out to take in the USFRAWorld of Speed event, the couple end-ed up getting married right on startingthe line. Racers Mary West and BurkeLeSage graciously acted as witnesses.

“We drove out in my ’29 maroonhighboy street rod,” noted Law, “Thiswas its longest excursion and thewind blew horribly all across Kansas.The car had no heater, or side cur-tains.” By the time they reachedSilverthorn Colorado it was a bracing19 degrees one morning so Law cut ahole in the floorboards rigging up amakeshift manifold heater. Jokingabout the experience, he also admiredSuzanne’s stalwart constitution, dead-panning, “That’s the way you test ‘emto see if they really love you, but youonly have to test ‘em one-way.” Theydrove back to West Virginia via thesouthern route.

By the 1987 Speedweek Law hadretired form the mines and thought itwould fun if he turned his ‘29 high-boy into a salt roadster. In his firstyear the car ran 202mph against a 209record in A Street class using a blownmouse motor. Pretty good for a buncha hillbillies their first time out.

The switch to the superchargeddestroked Pontiac came in ’89 and bythe 1990 season they ran 218mph.Unfortunately, racer Tony Piner hadlaid down a 226 in street roadster classusing a pro stock motor. One of thecrew framed Piner’s picture and hungin Law’s shop over the workbench (itsstill there) and told him, “That’s whatyou have to out run next year.”

Looking at the photo all winterinspired the change to turbos and theold coal miner set a 244 mph C/blownstreet roadster record in 1991 that stillstands to this day – more than adecade later. “My crew worked theirhearts out for me and the least I coulddo is give them a little recognition,”explaining the string of names in the

record listing under “entrant” asVasicek-Slate-Daugherty-Law. Thisalso signaled the start of the “too fast”saga of speed.

When he left home in 1992 BudDaugherty forgot to tell his wife (bigmistake) he would be the rookie driverthat year. In four passes the virgin hotshoe set a record (238 mph in C/BGR),which still stands, joined the 200MPHclub and because it was October nippyweather, never took off his fire suit.

“We just kept getting back inline,” remembered Law, “On the lastrun, at 244mph the tranny broke andI think it saved his life cause we mighthave gone crazy fast if we would havechanged the gears and gotten back inline. The salt was temptingly good.”

On the long haul home the boysdecided to retire the car and build aracer that knows which end is sup-posed to be in front. “Roadsters are alot of fun up to 190mph, past that thefun goes away as the car tries to swapends giving you white knuckles,” cau-tions Law.

Around Christmas 1992 he startedto build the lakester, and it made itsfirst run in 1994 at USFRA’s World ofSpeed. “Talk about a depression,” hemoaned, “Speedweek was rained out,the salt deteriorated and I began towonder if I’d ever get a chance to runthe car.”

The next case of self-inflicted“trailer queening” came on the car’sfourth pass when in the second timedmile the car recorded a blistering 309miles per hour. “I was learning todrive it,” confessed Law attempting tobreak the standing 265 record, “I wasgoing too fast in the middle mile. Thecar was handling good, but theparachutes were wrong and tried totear themselves off. The transmissionwas acting up and I thought it mightlock up, so I put it on the trailer, tookit home and fixed everything over thewinter.”

Motor failure was the story in1995. The front wheel came off roar-ing through the timing lights at331mph in ’96. Law got the laundryhung and stopped straight, but toreup the body panels. The entire frontend was reworked that winter. It was awet year in 1997, but he managed tosqueak out a 305 record despite theengine sucking in wet salt flying up

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Fuel For Thoughtwith “Landspeed Louise” Ann Noeth

Grumpy old men findhappiness in speed!

Goodguys Goodtimes Gazette Page 15

and off the front tires. The team wasstill running the “C” motor, adestroked big block topped with Pon-tiac Pro Stock cylinder heads. He wasnow a member of the elite 300MPHChapter of the 2Club.

It’s quite a feat to wind up a carover three bills, especially running onpump gas yet when Law turned in the313mph record in 1998, he grumpedabout it because they had upgraded toClass “B” — a bigger displacementengine of 433. “The B motor shouldhave given us more speed, but thesmaller engine, the “C,” has been thestar.”

The next year Bob Beatty, run-ning the car on fuel, set a 323 record,parking another name in the 20003Club roster. Joe, that wily under-ground mole, then siphoned off thefuel, and on gas bumped his record to334, Bob finished things off at 338that year, again running on fuel.These boys stay busy.

“We stopped after that and putthe car on the trailer,” admitted Law,“Bob and I felt the car had acquired amind of its own and the front endwanted to lift once we were runningin the 340 range.” Once again – toofast, a problem that most racers wishthey could have.

To control front end lift canardswere added to the car after the millen-nium rolled over, they changed theengine back to the “C” class of 370cubic inches and Law set another gasrecord at 338, with Bob setting fuelrecord at 330 during the AugustSpeedweek. By the October WorldFinals Law punched up the fuel recordto 349 – startling for an open-wheelcar.

The Institute for ScientificResearch (ISR) came aboard as a spon-sor in 2002 using the car as a testbench for some of its test and analysisproducts, but it suffered a doubleengine failure almost ending Law’sracing program financially. ISRstepped up to finance the building ofa new “A” class engine spitting 493terrorizing inches and set their sightson the salt.

When Law first met the spriteyoung lady who would take the“grumpy” out of a bunch of old men,he made the awful mistake of think-ing she was a secretary. The computerengineer who was working on anintelligent flight control system forthe F-15 had been sent to figure outhow to best utilize the company’ssponsorship of the racecar. Kisner isstill making him pay for that goof.

He was further dazzled when thegroup walked out to the parking lotand Kisner opened the driver’s door ofher silver Mustang GT. Law, visiblyshocked, asked, “Is that YOUR car?” Itwas at the very next meeting whenLaw turned up with page after page ofprintouts for ISR to study that he firstmentioned to Kisner about driving his

car. “I figured he was joking,” shechuckled, “Actually, until the day I satin the car on the starting line Ithought he was joking.”

It was while working together onthe car’s fuel injection system thatLaw laid down the driving terms: helpme get the sponsorship money to pre-pare the car for Bonneville and youcan drive the car. Kisner, who hadnever raced, but whose childhood waspopulated with many high perfor-mance cars and bikes in the family,accepted the challenge. A little oversix months later she made her firstlicensing run.

Kisner sailed through her rookieruns, absorbing every scrap of infor-mation and advice offered while Lawand his crew worked like crazy aftereach run to keep the twin-tur-bocharged Pontiac in tip-top runningform. They changed gears so often thecrew though they actually might wearout — themselves and the gears!

Kisner, 27, grew up in Duncan-non, Pennsylvania, a small town nearHarrisburg. An avid reader, she alsoowns and gingerly rides a high perfor-mance Buell Lightening, but prefersJohn Shaffer’s Dyna WideGlideHarley. She and Shaffer will marry onJune 5th, 2004. She may be the thirdwoman in LSR history to set a plus300 record, but no doubt the first for-mer piccolo player in the Universityof West Virginia’s MountaineerMarching Band to do so.

Law and crew watched in gleefulsatisfaction as Kisner became the firstrookie to earn an unlimited licenseover 300 mph and earn entrée to the300MPH Chapter of the 2 Club, butalso became the first woman to setTop Speed of the meet to earn theHOT ROD Magazine Top Time Tro-phy.

When Kisner felt settled in hernew “ride”, she admitted that sheactually tried to break the rear wheelsloose a bit to make sure she was driv-ing the car as hard as it could go. Notsomething you expect a rookie tothink about, let alone execute well.But she did. Punch that loud pedallady!

So there you have it, a speedodyssey finally set down in print. Abrief, condensed taste of what hap-pens when you catch “salt fever.” JoeLaw and crew, no longer “GrumpyOld Men” are only one of hundreds ofstories that percolate up from thesalt’s lure. Imagine what all the untoldtales have to say.

Louise Bruce Horkey

1/4 H