Off Limits:Bonneville

Running Time Code

Video Description Narration

00:02 Zout from nose of Hercules Cold Open:Bob Williams: “Nothing can hold a candle to what you will see at the Bonneville Salt Flats.”

Sound Up: streamline vehicles race byGlen Barrett: “Salt fever’s permanent. This place could break your heart. IT could be the happiest day of your life. You just don’t know.”

Sound Up: Muscle car engine revs

Randy Nelson: “Make a mistake at 300 miles an hour and a lot of times it’s not a walk away.”

Bar Hodgson: “There’s an element of danger. If you have a get-off on that at a very high speed, you’re going to do some tumbling and who knows.”

00:36 OFF LIMITS Packaged Opening

00:58 Key: Racing On The Salt Flats / Bonneville Speed Week / Just Outside Wendover, Utah, USA

VO 1.1:Narrator: In the world of motorsport, no event captures the imagination like Bonneville Speed Week. Once a year, car and motorcycle enthusiasts ravenous for speed, congregate in one of the most alien environments on the planet, as they chase land speed records on a seemingly endless expanse of hard packed salt.The Bonneville Salt Flats are located on the western Edge of the Great Salt Lake basin in Utah, in the USA. This natural anomaly is the remnant of an ancient freshwater lake left behind after the last ice age, about 15,000 years ago. Today, naturally evaporating ground water

continually regenerates a flat crust that in some areas is almost 5 feet thick. This massive expanse of salt covers approximately 46 square miles of land located 100 miles west of Salt Lake City. The salt flats are Inhospitable to even the simplest of life forms…nothing grows here. Temperatures range from below freezing in the winter to triple digits in the summer. It’s the last place you’d expect to see people lining up for hours to compete for land speed records.

02:34 Key: Gary Hensley / Staiger / Hensley Racing / “200 mph Club” MemberGary OC

Gary: “This is very harsh out here, and it’s - and there’s no air to run your engine on so it’s a tough place to go fast. There’s no prize money, no glory, you barely get in a magazine or ever heard of.”

02:47 Orange car L to R

Trophy tilt up

VO 1.2:Narrator: Despite the harsh environmental conditions, the Bonneville Salt Flats are a near perfect natural drag strip… the miles of flat hard packed racing surface and long run offs have drawn land speed racing enthusiasts for more than a century. The first unofficial land speed record was set here back in 1914. The Southern California Timing Association has been organizing land speed racing’s premiere annual event since 1949. Back then Bonneville Speed Week became an officially sanctioned venue for land speed racers daring enough to attempt to set world records in one of 40 categories. The Bonneville Salt Flats are safeguarded by the United States department of the interior’s Bureau of Land Management. They decide who can race here and when. There are only a handful of land speed races held annually out on the Salt Flats. Bonneville Speed Week is the oldest, largest and most attended event of them all.

03:47 Announce booth and crowd shoot.

Gary: “It only happens once a year. This is the big 7 day event. This is the big daddy of them all. And if you’re a hot rod or motor enthusiast this is nirvana. This is

really where the best amateur racers collect every year to show off their stuff.”

04:05

Key: Les Hodges / Spectator

“Plane like” car Right to Left

Les: “You read about this place, you see movies about the place and you don’t, until you get here, realize what the ah, the scale of this is. This is just mind boggling. Um, the cars, the ideas, where they get them from, and they actually got the nerve to drive the things at the speeds they do, and ah, we’re just, we’re amazed.

4:24 Key: Speed Demon / This Week’s top recorded speed: / 365.941 mph

Sound Up: Speed Demon Races by

4:29 Same car Right to Left

Key: Kent Riches / Driver, Riches/Nelson Team

Kent: “You pretty much have to be on top of the game to run 300, you know and and everything – it can’t be just ok, everything needs to be perfect.”

04:37 Driver “Cocooned in driver’s seat of “plane like” car.Key: Randy Nelson / Crew Chief, Riches/Nelson Team

Randy: “It’s just gotta be – no mistakes, you know you don’t get a second chance – you make a mistake at 300 miles an hour and a lot of times it’s not a walk away.”

04:44 Starter raises hands and signals go

VO 1.3:Narrator: Today there are literally hundreds of vehicle categories and just as many land speed records to chase and set. In many cases the vehicles on-parade at Bonneville are as unique and one of a kind as the Salt Flats themselves.

05:02 Interesting purple car revving and start L to R.Red streamline car nose

Rubber-band Car Key: Bob Mundei / Crew Member, Team Arrow Racing

Bob Mundei: “The cars you see here, ah, you’ll never see anywhere else on earth. When I came in this morning I was following a 32 Duce coup and behind me was a 1940’s hotrod, and both of them had salt all over them. And you’ve got cars that are streamliners that do 300 miles an hour, and you’ve got guys that are setting records at 30 and 40. For example, this little thing over here is a rubber band car. It runs on elastic bands. Big elastic bands, but it’s elastic bands, 2 engines, put a 5 speed transmission in it. And he’s gonna try and set the elastic band record for the whole world here. Where on earth can you find

that? Where else?”05:40 Motorcycle with older

woman.Key: Connie Beavers / Motorcycle Racer, 70 years old / Set land speed record in her category: 211.284 mph

Connie: I hope to go 210, ah break my own record, which is 205. I set it last year. Speed’s in my blood. Sound Up: Connie races off on her motorcycle.

05:59 Motorcycle L to R (under Key)

Key: Dan Warner / Chief Impound Steward, Bonneville Speed Week

Dan: “There is no purse. Everything that it takes to compete and return is out of your heart and out of your own pocket. And it’s passion. I’ve been coming here long enough that I’ve seen kids dating, married, have kids, and those kids have kids.”

06:15 Streamline car in pit area.

Various beauty shots of cars. Engine bay open, racing and show

Bob Mundei: “It’s an emotion pit. Sure people put their life savings in here, but then people put their life savings into sailing, golf. Uh, some people save up all year and come here on 5 or 10 thousand dollars, some people have got millions. Um, yeah you can put as much money into it as you want, or you can substitute innovation for money. If you’re brilliant you can do that. If you’re not, you can- It’s a money pit.” (laughs)

06:43 Beauty shot of graphic on streamline car

Closeups and racing + sound of current land speed record.

VO 1.4:Narrator: And occasionally, when the combination of both money and innovation hits the jackpot: the results can be mind bowing. Case in Point, the Turbinator; An apache helicopter motor powered streamliner capable of streaking over 458 miles per hour; The fastest wheel driven vehicle on the planet.

Sound Up: Turbinator makes it’s record breaking run

07:09 Visual TransitionVarious shots of driver’s home garageKey: 3 Weeks Earlier / Team Arrow Racing Headquarters / Windsor, Ontario, Canada

VO 1.5:Narrator: For land speed enthusiasts, the Road to Bonneville Speed Week starts well before the rubber hits the salt. Building and maintaining a vehicle that can withstand the salt flats’ harsh conditions is a daunting task. No one knows this better

Various shots of streamline motorcycle without external covering

Shots of streamline motorcycle running

than Bob Williams, owner and builder of the Arrow Streamliner motorcycle.Despite its futurist torpedo shape, beneath this aluminum skin lies a motorcycle with two wheels. The heart of this beast is a 500CC, four cylinder turbo charged Honda motorcycle engine. It’s been carefully wrapped in a custom built frame welded of chrome-moly steel. And by the way, the streamliner also houses a driver who must ride lying on his back while looking through a 3-inch periscope. This year, Williams is once again returning to Bonneville in a 3rd attempt to break the 500cc blown fuel, or turbo charged, motorcycle land speed record of 211mph . That record was set back in 1956 by the German motorcycle company – NSU.Bob and his team have come tantalizingly close to BREAKING this record in the past, but ‘close’ in this sport, just isn’t good enough.

08:35 Various close up shots of engine (motorcycle)

Key: Bob Williams / Team Owner, Team Arrow Racing

Various frame shots of streamline motorcycle

Washing caked salt off car

Bob Williams: “The bike is 8 years old. 2 years in building and 6 years in campaigning. It started out with a fuel tank from an F4 phantom fighter. 24-inches in diameter, 13 feet long, with a few dents in it for 500 dollars. That was the tip of a very big iceberg. I built the hoops, matched the inside of the diameter of the shell, so the outside of the hoops fit inside the 24-inch shell. The frame becomes extensions of those hoops. The ah, swing arms were parts off motorcycles that I had to modify and strengthen so they could take the forces of the heavier weight and a more powerful motor. It’s been such an evolution all the time, getting to the point where it works. What you think works, you take it down there and it doesn’t. And the salt, and the other things you have to deal with, it’s like trying to build something for the moon when you’re on earth. Cause the circumstances are so different.”

09:44 Working on streamline motorcycle

VO 1.6:Narrator: Bob Williams and his crew have discovered that preparing the streamliner motorcycle for Bonneville Speed Week is easier than finding a qualified rider to pilot the machine. Finding candidates for the job of hurtling at speeds of 200 plus miles an hour, on a runway of salt while lying on your back, just inches above the unforgiving surface – has proven to be difficult.This year, long time motorcycle-show promoter and experienced drag racer Bar Hodgson has agreed to take on the challenge. After ogling the Arrow Streamliner at one of his own shows, the 70 year old couldn’t resist stepping up to the plate after hearing that Team Arrow Racing was searching for a rider.

10:28 Bar revving blue motorcycle

Bar OC in room full of motorcyclesKey: Bar Hodgson / Rider, Team Arrow Racing

Bar: “Well I used to drag race back in the old days and run big Harley strokers and when I turned 60 I decided to take up road racing and did that for about 10 years and now I’ve hit 70 and Bonneville’s one of the last things I haven’t done, so now’s the time to do it.”

10:45 Bob working on streamline motorcycle

Team eating pizza

Bob Williams: “There’s no blue print on how to do this. There’s no guidelines on how to do it. I have a wonderful group of friends that bid into my dream. If it wasn’t for that we couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it by myself, and I couldn’t do it without the help of all these people who all volunteered. It’s about the human spirit, as much as it is about racing.”

Sound Up: Team Arrow racing raise glasses. Bob Williams: “To the record boys! Here! Here! Cheers!”

11:13 Bonneville Flats Marker and open salt expanseKey: Bonneville Speed Week / Monday / Bonneville Salt Flats. Utah, USA

VO 2.1Narrator: This year’s Bonneville Speed Week kicked off 2 days ago, with it have come long lines and prolonged wait times are inevitable at the start of the week. But Bob Williams is a veteran at this game.

This year he arrived a few days into the event to ease the stress on the team’s new rider – 70-year-old Bonneville Rookie, Bar Hodgson.

11:36 Insert of hands on steering wheel.People in procession to get to speedway.

Bar: “Bonneville speedway, you go ‘oh here’s a race track’. You pull in and expect to see grandstands and buildings and everything, nice black pavement all laid out and green grass down the sides of it, but there’s nothing; Just one big expanse of white salt. Isn’t this a bizarre experience, guys are driving motor homes down there. Everybody’s strutting their stuff and they’ve got all their great stuff here. Customs and rods, and everything… Only in America.”

12:11 WS Low Level of SUV on salt flats. Long Z out

Key: Dan Warner / Chief Impound Steward, Bonneville Speed Week

Dan: “This is a huge area as you well know and a person can get lost out here and we try to verify - make sure that everybody knows where they’re going at any given time, you don’t want somebody wandering out on the racetrack when there’s a vehicle coming the other direction. And that’s why you see an abundance of cones out here.”

12:30Commuter cars in cone laneway Black pickup race L to R

Inspectors looking at vehicles.

VO 2.2:Narrator: Before they can chase a land speed record, all registered competitors must have their vehicles thoroughly checked by Bonneville Speed Week’s meticulous staff of technical inspectors. Each vehicle must meet the SCTA’s strict safety requirements. A team’s failure to meet these tough standards will result in being disqualified from racing.

Sound Up: Inspector: “What happens if the front of the car brakes off? Driver: My legs are up there, I’m paraplegic then. This section of the car won’t break up.

13:01 Close up of car being inspected

Dan: Safety is key most. Records are what we’re here for; safety is - we want these guys coming back. While this looks like a very simple form of motor sports where you just get in a car and drive it in a straight line. It’s not. And things happen

real fat at 200 plus miles an hour, so we want to make sure all the guys and gals that drive up here are thoroughly protected.”

Sound Up: Inspector: “My concerned is, I mean, there’s, I’m not really feeling anything underneath the seat where it’s secured. Because, okay, let’s say he takes an impact, the seat comes down, the belts come off his shoulders because he’s compressed, and now he’s not restrained within the vehicle anymore so…”

13:41 Various shots of cars being inspectedGary OCKey: Gary Hensley / Staiger / Hensley Racing / “200 mph Club” Member

Gary: “The rules for safety are very, very strict. These are the strictest rules that I’m aware of in any form of racing, because they don’t want anybody to get hurt. The whole idea is to have fun, go fast, and not get hurt.”

13:55 WS Pan of flats

Key: Short Course Line-Up / Monday – 11:15 am / “D” License – 1st attempt

Various shots of cars waiting in lineup

Various car shots

VO 2.3:Narrator: After passing technical inspection, racers cue-up behind the starting lines and wait to make their timed run down one of the club’s three temporary drag strips. With over 500 entries this year many find themselves baking for hours in the sweltering heat.SCTA Licensed Riders, returning to Bonneville can attempt to set a record on their 1st run, but Bar Hodgson is a Bonneville rookie - and before he can even attempt to make a record run of over 200 miles per hour, he must first prove that he is capable of going fast out on the salt by obtaining a series of licenses.

14:34 Yellow hotrod

Starter signalingBar OCKey: Bar Hodgson / Rider, Team Arrow Racing

Bar: “Bonneville’s not about just going there and racing. You must obey all the rules and they’re all safety-oriented rules, so you’ve got to prove you can go fast. You have to go a step at a time, you have to prove you can go 125 miles an hour, and 150 miles an hour, and 175 miles an hour, and then 200 miles an hour, and get licenses for each of those, before you get to go over 200 miles an hour.”

Sound Up: A motorcycle takes off on the

salt.

Bar: “Well we weren’t going to go for our license right off the bat in the streamliner because there was a bunch of work had to be done to it yet, and I could save a lot of time by using the standard super-bike to get my lower licenses. We’ll move to the streamliner when we go for our higher licenses.”

Sound Up: Bar waits in line. 15:20 Bar on Superbike

Trying to attach GPS to bike

Z Out of people waiting in line

Key: Short Course Line-Up / Monday, 1:20pm / “D” License – 1st attempt

Bar: “We’re trying to adapt this GPS to it so that I can get a mileage, an accurate mileage read because this race bike only has a tachometer on it. So I’ve got to guesstimate my speed, and I can’t break out, I’ve got to run, I’ve got to run 125 to 149 without breaking out. If I hit 150 I’ve got to go back to the back of the line and do it all over again. So we don’t want to do that. I’ve got some concerns, you know. I haven’t raced on salt before. I feel apprehensive coming in to it and I try to think of everything. If I can clear my mind enough to say, ‘you’ve covered all your angles Bar,’ I have no problem being resigned to something and ah, going for it.”

Sound Up: Bar: “This is the borrowed leathers. These we borrowed from Doug, one of the, actually one of the tech inspectors when mine wouldn’t pass.”

Sound Up: Starting line Official: “Tuck it right in there, the view’s nicer up there.” Bar: “Yes sir.”

16:25 Bar walking bike to starting point

Bar OC

Bar suiting up Worm’s eye

Bar: “My age really hasn’t been a factor, it never bothered me all my life when I was younger, it doesn’t bother me now. So do I consider 70 years old as a barrier here to me, and that? A bsolutely not; I mean everybody here has grey beards, everywhere I look. There’s an element of danger, but frankly being on the open bike, that was concerning me more than

view anything because if you have a get off on that at a very high speed you’re going to do some tumbling, and who knows.”

17:00 Key: “D” License – 1st Attempt / Monday – 2:45 pm / Target Speed Range: 125 mph – 149 mph

Bar talking to Starter

Sound Up: Starter: “Have you gone down yet today?” Bar: “1st time. 1st time today.” Starter: “Okay, how fast you going to go?” Bar: “135.” Starter: and any problems what-so-ever, which way are you going to turn out.” Bar: “I’m going to turn that way.” Starter: “Okay, nice clean run you’re going to turn out to your right… I want you to pull you parachute when you go through the traps.” Bar: “what are you talking about?” Starter: “You’re paying attention, that’s all good. Have you ever driven on Salt before?” Bar: “No.” Starter: “You’re gonna enjoy this…”

Starter in radio: “8780 with a rookie attached!”

17:41 Starter pan to Bar about to start

Several WS of bar racing

VO 2.4:Narrator: Hodgson has raced A Motorcycle before, but never at these high speeds and certainly never under these harsh conditions. The temperature is high, nearly 100 degrees but the pressure to perform is even higher. A crash on his 1st run at close to 150 miles per hour could be fatal.

18:07 Bar Races, Flash To WhiteSound Up: Bar: “The uh, I took a small peek at the GPS and it was uh, reading 83 miles an hour. (laughs) and I went, hmmm. (laughs) It’s just a big guessing game.”

Sound Up: Bar: “8780” Timing Official: “Yes sir.” (hands Bar his timing slip.) Bar: “Thank you.”

Timing Official: “You have a good one.” Bar: “It says 113 miles an hour. That means that we’re, that we need to be in 5th gear or 6th gear. It means we’re so far off it isn’t funny. No good. Gotta get back in the lineup, do it again.”

19:27 Streamline car rolls to start lineKey: Bonneville Speedweek / Monday – 3:05pm - Long Course

Streamliner Push Start

VO 3.1: Narrator: Bar Hodgson isn’t the only one going for a land speed attempt at this year’s Bonneville Speed Week. Out here on the Salt Flats of Utah, it appears every land speed racer dreams of setting a new world’s record.

Sound Up: Racer at starting line: “I laid in bed for an hour this morning going through the gears with my eyes closed. The record’s 232, but I’m pretty confident we can do it.”

19:52 Streamliner push start and run

Cut to WS of control center

VO 3.2: Narrator: Depending on the class of vehicle, land speed racers use a 7 - mile “long” course or one of two 5-mile “short” courses where top speeds are recorded by the SCTA officials down to 1 “One-hundredth” of a mile per hour. This dizzying amount of Data is recorded and tracked in the club’s Master control tower located between the two courses at the 3 mile marker. Here a team of dedicated volunteers scour countless timing readouts throughout the week.

Sound Up: Glen “1946 will be next up on the long course.”

20:28 ZOut for control centerShots inside control.Car push start

Glen OCKey: Glen Barrett / Official Timer, Bonneville Speed Week

Glen: “This is the master control here, we do all the course control, the safety dispatches, all that and I announce all the speeds and basically, you know, what’s going on throughout the day with everybody. We’ve got three computers that we’re using up here on the - in the tower itself. Plus, you know, we’ve got auxiliary equipment downstairs. Everybody has a monitor so we’re not looking over each other’s shoulders like we used to in the old days. We used to set up on a scaffold with

Car Engine

SPINOUT WS releases parachute and loses it

a computer read out thing about this big, it had these big huge dials on it and they were spinning like, you know, all that. You know, it wasn’t- very sophisticated, now we got over 500 entries and 3 courses, so you know it’s a big system.”

Sound Up: Glen “And in the last mile, Bob, he went 244.535”

Glen: “Everybody says, oh yeah I can bring my drag race car up here and go 350 miles an hour but most of them don’t understand – and uh, to make a car run for 5 miles without blowing things all over the track is very difficult, a quarter mile car you can do it. They will not live here a quarter of a mile.”

Sound Up: Glen “We have a spin on 4 – long course.”

21:54 Spinout Cont.

Key: “D” LICENSE – 2nd ATTEMPT / TUESDAY - 8:00am / Target Speed Range: 125 mph – 149 mph

VO 3.3:Narrator: For Bar Hodgson – a high speed get off is not an option. Now ready for his 2ndattempt at his 1st of 4 required licenses, he still has a long, hot, salty road ahead of him before he can take a shot at the record.

22:10 Bar about to start again

Bob OCKey: Bob Williams / Team Owner, Team Arrow RacingSuperbike R to L

Bob Williams: “There’s such a great chance of the conditions not being right, the salt not being hard, too much wind, rain, and you have that window of opportunity like a space shuttle, and if it goes by you go home with your hat in your hand.”

Sound Up: Bar races on motorbike22:37 Superbike near end of track

Bar OC

Key: Bar Hodgson / Rider, Team Arrow Racing

Crew at end point

Bar: “When you get down to the end and you turn off that throttle, you have a sense of elation, because you go, you know you’ve gone though the timing traps. It’s all history now, you’ve just got to get the numbers now. You turn off and you come to a stop, you’ve gone so fast down there that you’re all by yourself out on the salt, and you just stop, and you just have time to think about things before your crew even

Bar taking helmet off

catches up with you. That’s a great time; a time to really be personal about the whole thing with yourself. “

Sound Up: Bar: “Well that was a good one. The car just verified that it was a 135 right on the money, exactly what we needed.” (Takes off Helmet) “Oh my sunburn is hurting” Big load off my mind really, no guessing no nothing, I could see exactly what the speed was, I saw 135, held it right there. Guy verifies: “135” (clap). Yesterday they towed me 8 miles without a helmet on and, like my sunburn’s covered in salt – you’re rubbing salt in my wounds.” (Bar climbs onto bike) “Alright so back to the line, we’ll get on the end f the line, we’ll get all set for the next run.” Dave Powell: “okay.”

24:01 Superbike towed to start VO 3.4: Narrator: Instead of obtaining his D License, Hodgson and the Team Arrow Racing crew collect some surprising and discouraging news.

24:09

Key: Team Arrow Racing Pit / Tuesday – 8:30 am

Various shots of less populated area

Motorcycle streamline in workbay

Bob Williams: According to the rule book you need to qualify with licenses: a 125 miles an hour, a 150 miles an hour a 175 miles an hour, and 200, but this time they said you have to do 2 runs in each category. Well that slowed the process down a little bit. But luckily, the pits are thinning out and uh, probably 30% or 40% of the people have gone home for whatever reason; Time or they blew up or had mechanical problems or whatever, but now that the number of racers is diminishing, we can do more runs now without as much hassle. Uh, you’re not going to spend 4 hours in the sun trying to get one pass.”

Sound Up: Bob Williams “Are you ensured, Dave?” Dave: “For what.” Bob Williams: “Life insurance in case it falls on you.”

Bike without skinVarious inserts workingo n car

Bob Mundei: “I thiunk they exclude motorcycle streamliners.” Dave: “As soon as they found out I was coming to Bonneville they cancelled me.” Bob Williams: “I see.”

Bob: “Well what we’re doing here is we’re uh, taking the skin off to prepare the bike to go through tech inspection. They can’t inspect it with the skin on. It looks pretty, but that’s not what they’re looking for. We’re just tidying up some wiring now. Some salt got into some of the electrical components and caused us some grief. We had to jerry-rig a few things but we were able to make it work. They are strict, strict, strict on safety here. Extremely so, um, ah, and they’re strict on displacement. If you’re 500 cc’s and you’re entered into 500 cc class, if you’re 501 you’re out, 1 cc more. And they’re strict on gasoline, if you use their gasoline, if you’re running in a gas class, the gasoline standard has been the same forever. No matter what happens with new gases, they keep the same quality of gas, so that everybody who sets a gas record is the same as the gas record 10 years ago. Okay, and they seal the tank, and then when you come in after you give them your time slip, first thing: they siphon some gas out. They do a spectra-analysis to make sure it’s their gas.”

26:32 Key: “D” License Back-Up Trial / TUESDAY – 9:45 am / Target Speed Range: 125 mph – 149 mphBar at start line again

Sound Up: “Starter “What, you again!?” Bar: “Yeah, me again!” Starter: ”You’re having way too much fun.”

Bar: “What happened was, they changed the rules, we didn’t know about it – on the motorcycle end of it. Motorcycles only, must back-up each license run.”

Hedy: “Do two passes.”

Bar: “We have to do 2 passes.”

Sound Up: Another motorbike takes off from starting line. Strarter: “8780. Go ahead.” Bar starts up, races off.

27:34 Dip to black

Key: Bonneville License Office / Tuesday – 3:00pm / Bar Hodgson collects E, D, and C LicensesBar at timing booth

Bar: “I’ve got my 3 time slips now so now I’ve got 3 of my licenses lined up, I’m feeling very very happy and I’m now headed for 175 to 199 miles per hour, but gotta do it twice.”

Sound Up: Official in Booth: “Okay, there you are, congratulations, we’ll see you on the next one.”Bar: “Thank you Joanne.”

Bar: “Originally we were going to do the 175 –199 in the streamliner, but this bike is proving so damn fast that we’re going to go for it because we went 171 so I’m just going to keep it pegged close to the rev limiter and we can break it, I think we can break it. I think we’ll break it and get it on it.”

28:17 Key: Bonneville Speed Week / Tuesday – 5:00pm – Long Course Starting Line

Various shots of cars waiting in line

VO 4.1:Narrator: As Bonneville Speed Week unfolds, the harsh conditions of salt and sun start to take their toll. Despite shorter line-ups at the starting lines … equipment malfunctions frustrate many of the racers waiting to make a run.

Sound Up: Racer Mark Seeley waits for another streamliner to start: “I’d like to see him get off there and get this thing going”. Starter: “Okay so you guys dead for the moment?” Dessert Rose racer: “For the moment.” Starter: “You want to push it out, work on it, we’ll tuck it back in later.” Dessert Rose Racer: “Okay.”

28:49 Long motorcycle at start line Key: Mark Seeley / Rider, “Famute Special”

Mark Seeley: “I was all ready. Try to keep myself calm, I was set to go and now I’ve gotta wait again and it’s hot. So ah, I’ve just had to kind of sit here, keep it together,

Rose streamline car

Various shots of blue motorcycle at starting line

I’ll be alright.”

“It’s got the turning Radius of the Queen Mary.”.

29:37 Blue motorcycle starting

Key: Long Course Line-Up / Tuesday – 5:25pm / “B” License – 1st Attempt

Bar preparing to race again

VO 4.2Narrator: Of all the records being challenged at Bonneville speed week, the 500cc blown fuel motorcycle record has proven to be one of the oldest and most difficult to beat. Set at 211 miles per hour by a German government backed racing team back in 1956; it has remained unbroken to this day. Bar Hodgson is now 1 license away from attempting to smash that record.

Sound Up: Dave Powell: “If you think of it, what you could do is: you know what happened to Rossi eh? He found out at 200 miles an hour the clutch lever was being pushed in by the wind, so poke your finger out.”

30:17 Bar standing by bike

Key: Bar Hodgson / Rider, Team Arrow Racing

Truck push start Pan to Bar next in line

Bar OC

Bar: “we’re gonna go, flat out in each gear, I’m going to power shift each gear, and when we get to the second, end of the second mile, come into the second to the third mile, I’m going to be laying down for the entire mile and I hope it’s a big number.”

Bar: “I’d be some kind of wimp if I started thinking about ‘do I have any limitations here,’ because nobody’s got limitations here. You know if you’re not in to what you’re here for, you really shouldn’t be here. So this is an opportunity for me, it’s a chance to just steep in this whole atmosphere here, which is a very unusual atmosphere, and very hard to describe. It’s timeless.

Car in other lane starts, pan to Bar

Key: “B” License – 1st Attempt / Tuesday – 5:45pm / Target Speed Range: 175 mph – 199 mph

Starter: “Motorcycle 8780. It’s yours.”

31:42 Dip to black

Bar OC on bike

Inserts of salt on bike

Bar: “Well we’re not happy, we got 168. But it seems as the day has gone on things have gotten hotter, we can hear water boiling in the engine it’s so damn hot. The salt’s throwing up and it’s getting to the grid work on the radiator and heat’s coming up. So that’s all we’re going to get out with this motor.” Dave Powell: ”Back to plan B which is the streamliner.”

32:07 Dave OC

Key: Dave Powell / Crew Member, Team Arrow Racing

Dave: “Bar has to go with the streamliner for tech and I think that’s our best bet for right now. It’s not going to go any faster today. So we got a long tow, we’ve got a 7 mile tow to get back to the pits.”

“Back to the ranch!”32:26 Bike about to be towed

Visual Transition

Bar: “it’s a grueling process, it’s hard on everybody and it’s, it’s, it’s tough, you know. It’s a test, there’s no doubt about it. That’s, that’s the game, you want to win the big prize, that’s the game.”

32:50 Streamline motorcycle in pit areaKey: Team Arrow Racing Pit / Tuesday – 6:30pm

Bar: “But I tell you bob, I’ve been pretty intense on this thing for a couple of days now, so I’ve got to get my head back over here.”

Bar: “Well I think this whole thing is a total learning experience, it’s a test, it’s definitely a huge test of endurance and fortitude, and a whole bunch of other good platitudes. But I think we set out to do a certain thing, and we did that with the pro star bike, we got our first three licenses. Now that’s powerful. We could have failed

Insert of superbike

Shots of Bar lying in streamliner

at that point, we haven’t. So now it’s in, and get through our final tech, show them we can bail out with safety, and then go for our shake down run.”

“Well, this is a little weirder.”

Bar: “As all our runs had been on the standard superbike for the qualifying for our lower licenses, this was the 1st time actually in the streamliner, so that was going to make it very interesting.”

Bar: “Bob let’s review your fire pulls here.” Bob Williams: “Okay. Engine compartment, this is the only one you really use.”

33:55 Shots around streamline in pit with Bar in seat

Closing door

Closeup of cockpit controls

Bar OC

Bar: “I’ve got to get in that cockpit, I’ve got to know exactly what my procedures are, and I’ve got to do those procedures. And if I do them all right, and we have luck on our side, which is a big part of the experience here, and the machine holds together well, we’ll get it. The machine can do it, It’s good for I’ll bet 275. We have a chance not to just break this record, but to shatter it. The only thing that’ll hold me back is if we do our first run on my B license, because I can’t break out 250 on that.”

Bob Williams: “Okay, straight down is on. Forward is a starter – “Vroom” okay? So it’s Off, On, Start. Throttle is on your foot, okay. You want to shut it off? Pull it back. Okay, you just shut the ignition off.” Bar: “Yeah, okay.”

Bar: “It’s very tough to get practice time in a streamliner. That’s one of the things that makes it very difficult in record setting because where are you going to run it, you can’t run it on the street. You could rent an airport and we tried to do that but they’re very short so you can’t get up to high

Various fast cars on strip speeds. That’s why Bonneville is where people come to from all over the world because it’s 11 miles long and you can run a streamliner.”

35:15 Visual transitionKey: Team Arrow Racing Pit / Wednesday – 9:00am

Gary: “So what we’re going to do now is get you in, and make sure that all this stuff here which can’t be adjusted on the line is adjusted.”

35:23 Getting into Streamliner motorcycle

Buckling in

VO 4.3Narrator: Although he’ s now wrenching and driving for a different Land Speed Team, Gary Hensley rode the Arrow streamliner for Bob Williams for 3 years. He came close to breaking the 500cc record in 2006, but crashed the streamliner during the attempt. Gary’s focus at this year’s Speedweek is setting a land speed record in a new 4-wheel vehicle of his own, but passing on his knowledge and experience of riding the streamliner is crucial to Hodgson’s success. Bar has very little time to learn as much as he can from the former Streamliner rider.

36:00

Gary OCKey: Gary Hensley / Staiger/Hensley Racing / Former Racer, Team Arrow Streamliner

Gary: “There’s a big learning curve. It depends on the conditions of the course and the weather. A motorcycle streamliner’s probably the hardest thing in the world to ride or build and be successful. There’s damn few of them that have ever been successful. Lots of them have been built – never did a thing.”

Gary: ‘Because this is what they’re looking for right, when you go through tech, he’s going to grab your hand and pull it to see if it comes out of the chassis. Because imagine that there’s no skin on this right now, and you’re sliding upside-down, you won’t have enough strength and enough awareness to pull your hands down.”

Gary: “You’re afraid you’re going to crash the whole time. Uh, this bike is moving around all the time, it’s got a very low roll centre and you’re actually looking through a periscope so what you’re actually seeing

is the world turning around you. And you’re constantly trying to figure out which way to turn the bars to keep the thing from crashing. So it’s a job and it’s really very stressful and not a very happy time.”

36:55 More shots of Bar in cockpit preparing for run

Bar exit from motorcycle

Bar OC

Sound Up: Gary: “How do you feel?” Bar: “I feel good.” Gary: “Good. Now pretend for a second you’re upside down.” Bar: “…” Gary: “Now you got to get yourself out right now okay? C’mon. C’mon out.” Bar: “Show me the operational..” Gary: “It’s right here. All you do is that.” Bar: “How does it work?” Gary: “You just flip it. Your – all your buckles are loose – don’t touch anything. Don’t do anything. Just get out. Slide you ass down. Get your chin up.”

Bar: “This is much like being an astronaut in that it isn’t about getting out and racing, it’s about knowing all your procedures and the precision involved in it and making all the right steps to make sure that your mission’s accomplished.”

Sound up: Bar: “Well, that worked!” 37:45 Bar infront of bike

Key: Bob Williams / Team Owner / Team Arrow Racing

Car pulling parachute

Bob Williams: I think we’re ready. Finally. I think I’ve dotted all my i’s and crossed all my t’s, and we’re ready for inspection. This is the 7th time the bike has gone through tech inspection.”

Sound Up: Bob: “Okay are we ready?”

38:17 Fade to White

Bar flashbacks

Key: Team Arrow Streamliner / Wednesday - 12:00pm / Official Inspection

VO 5.1:Narrator: Bar Hodgson’s journey at Bonneville Speed Week has been anything but a smooth ride. He’s still 1 license away from getting a shot at attempting to break the 500cc blown fuel motorcycle land speed record.And before he can ride in the Arrow Racing Streamliner, the motorcycle must

first pass this year’s technical inspection.38:39

Key: Bob Williams / Team Owner, Team Arrow Racing

Motorcycle being inspected

Bob OC

Bob Williams: The NSU record is the oldest record in Bonneville’s book. Set in 1956 and if we do set a record the rider gets into the 200 mile an hour club. What that is, it’s not going 200 miles an hour, it’s setting a record over 200 miles an hour.

Sound Up: Inspector looks at engine: “I see it.” Bob Williams: “You see it?” Inspector: “Yeah.” Bob: “It was there all the time I just forgot I’m sorry. I’m getting old.” (laughs)

Bob Williams: “Well we got held up a little bit going through tech, uh, so we’re in the process of doing that now, it just slows the game down again, keeping us off the track. No matter how prepared you are, worked all year on it, you think you got all your ducks in a row, you know, and then ah, something comes along, a little glitch… And we’ve got military spec connectors, we’ve got all the best, and still we have problems.”

Sound Up: Bob Williams: “Tell them where this is: I’ve got extra hoops for this, all set to bolt in, in case I win the lottery I can make it longer and put two motors in. (laughs) But I’d have to win, I’d have to win the bloody lottery 1st I tell ya.” Inspector 2: “When you get the money for setting the record right?” (laughter) Bob Mundei: “Yeah, that and a bottle-cap will get you ball-point pen.”

39:58 Bar suiting up

Bob OC

More inspection

Bob Williams: “Nothing goes easy, it’s always an uphill grind, but it makes victory that much sweeter. This is ah, you know, funded out of your pocket, out of your, I guess ah, your RRSP’s and your kid’s inheritance, and uh, but it’s a love, it’s a labour, it’s a engineering. It’s just, you know you meet people that you wouldn’t meet anywhere else. The technology that

Bar in driver seat running emergency sims

Crew claps for good exit time

Visual Transition:

you see at Bonneville is just fabulous.”

Sound Up: Inspector: “Alright, so, lets just imagine you have an issue with fire or engine failure. Okay? Go!

(Bar unbuckles and climbs out of hatch)

Inspector: “That’s perfect. 17? Yeah I got 15, that’s great.

(team members applaud).

Bob Williams: “That was faster than last time bar, it was 19 last time.”

Bar: “I was more worried this time.” (laughter)

Inspector: “And he’ll do it faster when he’s on fire.”

Bob Williams: “We passed tech inspection. What we’ll do is we’ll ah, go back to the pits, fill the tires with nitrogen, top up the gas and the oil, uh the coolant water and so on, and ah, put all the shell back on, pack the chutes, and be ready to run.”

41:37 Key: Team Arrow Racing Pit / Wednesday – 3:00 pm / Final Streamliner Preparation

Sound Up: Gary: “What I try to do is get the thing warm on the line so it’ll idle all by its lonesome. Bar: “Yeah.”

41:42 VO 5.2:Narrator: With Tech inspection complete, Former Team Arrow Rider Gary Hensley stops by the pit to help Hodgson with the controls in the streamliner.

41:51

Gary OC

Gary: “You know of they have a good week out here this bike could easily go 275 with no stress or strain what-so-ever.”

Bar: “Well my biggest concern was remembering everything I had to do considering I hadn’t done it before and

Crew in pits with motorcycle everything was totally foreign, so knowing where all my controls were, keeping that fresh in my mind, what I had to do, um thinking it through on my head on where I have to make my shift points and all those things that you must do.”

42:19 Crew talking over car/strategy in pit

Key: Gary Hensley / Staiger/Hensley Racing / Former Racer, Team Arrow Streamliner

Gary: “We were just going over the procedure he needs to follow to get down the track safely the first time. He’s got to know when to shift, so he doesn’t go too fast and make the starter mad at him. Cause he’s still speed limited, they don’t want him going more than 200 on this pass. So we went over the gearing chart, and we set up the lights on the shift mechanism so he can see when to shift, and when not to go too fast.”

42:42 More shots in pit area

Bob OC

Finishing touches on packing tent

Bob OC

Bob Williams: “We’re geared to go 300. So depending on the conditions, we’ll not only take that record of 211, but we expect to go 260, 270 without any problem at all. Now that and a dollar buys you coffee, okay. If conditions aren’t right, if it’s too windy, if we have a mechanical failure or something goes wrong, we could very well come back with our hat in our hand again. But our chances this year are as good or better than they’ve ever been.”

Sound Up: Gay: “You know who should be packing this is Bar. Now I’m not being smart, when I drive my racecar or who’s ever driving my race car, the guy driving the damn car is the guy that packs the chute.”

Bob Williams: “Everybody get’s anxious, excited. We’ve had things where the rider accidentally bumped the shoot, and the shoot came out and the rider can’t tell, there’s no rear view mirrors.”

Sound Up: Gay: “Okay, you want to pull

that wire through?”43:44 CU of putting parachute in

container

Rolling motorcycle out of pit area

Bar: “in terms of thinking of worst case scenarios, you really don’t do that outside of, knowing that, if something goes wrong okay I’ve got to pull my chute, I’ve got to fire off the fire extinguisher, you know, this is how we’re gonna go down, it’s all a matter of thinking it out ahead of time, in case there’s a bad scenario.”

44:10 Motorcycle rolled out of pit and attached to truck.

Beauty shot of maple leaf on nose cone

Bob Williams: “I think that the persistence and the stick-to-itiveness is the key to success for anybody in anything. Education, doesn’t guarantee you anything. You make your own opportunity, but if you attack something, then drag it to the end, you know, don’t give up.”

44:34 Streamliner in tow VO 5.3:Narrator: In order to earn his B License, Bar Hodgson now has to ride the streamliner down the timing course within a precise window of speed: no slower than 175 miles per hour and no faster than 199 miles per hour; and, he has to do it twice.

44:53 Key: Long Course Line-Up / Wednesday – 5:45 pm / “B” License – 2nd attempt

Key: Bar Hodgson / Rider, Team Arrow Racing

Motorcycle in tow

Bar suiting up Key: “B” License – 2nd Attempt / Wednesday – 6:30 pm / Target Speed Range: 175 mph – 199 mph

Bar: “This’ll be our first ah, qualifier on our B license, we’ll have to back that up in the morning, and then we’re good to go over 200. Right now I got one thing on my mind, is getting in that cockpit and doing my job, and I’ve got everything focused on that and tuned on that. I want this record without a doubt. This is the culmination of my motorcycle career; I’ve ridden motorcycles since I was 15 years old. I drag raced, I took up road racing at 60, and the opportunity to go out and grasp that record, I can smell it and I want it, there’s no doubt about it”

Sound up: Car at the front of the line races off.

Bar: “While waiting in line, there was no fear, I was not afraid of anything, really the excitement level was starting to build as we got closer and closer to the line.”

45:53 Bar Suiting up Bar: “I guess my concern at this stage is to just keep mentally doing mental checks of what I have to do, to know that my job is right down pat. If all this is taking place all day long, I better do my job right, (laughs) because it’s only going to be a short run.”

46:11 Bar looking down lineOther cars starting

Key: Long Course Starting Line / Wednesday - 6:47 pm

VO 5.4:Narrator: After a full day of preparation, 70-year-old Bar Hodgson is still raring to go, but at the Bonneville Salt Flats – it takes more than desire to a set land speed record. As every competitor knows, it takes patience, perseverance, and at this late time in the day, It also takes a little bit of luck: something that hasn’t come easy to the Team Arrow Racing crew.

46:36

Key: Bonneville Long Course / Wednesday – 7:00pm

Dip To Black

Sound-Up: Starter: Guys you’re not going to make our timeframe here. You guys are not gonna have time to get this in. Okay?”Dave Powell: “Yup. Thank you very much.” Starter: “One way or another we’ll see you guys in the morning.”

Bar: “We had waited most of the day in the line-up and finally we ran out of time in the day, it was getting late in the night and they cut the racing off at 7 o’clock and that was it, we couldn’t go any farther that day.”

Sound Up: Bar shuts trunk, “That’s it.” Other Participant, “So close.” Bar: “Yeah.”Other Participant: “You’re the 1st one cut off?”Bar: “yeah.”

Bar: “Well, that’s the agony and the ecstasy I guess. I mean, that’s racing, is how they say it.”

47:23 Key: Bonneville Speed Week / Thursday – 9:00 amBar OC

Dip to Black

Bar: “Next morning the weather was beautiful. We got to the line for our start position probably around 9am. The Starter said, ‘Good luck’ he says, ‘You’ve got a 7 mile an hour cross wind.’ And with that the

Push Start

hatch is closed. You’re now in total darkness at this time.”

Sound Up: Bob Williams pushes the Streamliner off of the starting line

Bar: “I took it up to red-line in first gear and made my 1st shift, but I could feel a little bit of wind tugging on my right hand side.”

Sound Up: Glen Barrett: “1150 – quarter mile speed, long course, 149.”

47:57 Motorcycle side cam view

Dip to Black

Start of Crash from side camera

LS of crash

Dip to black

Bar: “as we went to the top of second, I made my shift into third. We’re now doing about 185 miles an hour. It was at that point that I started to feel the wind really take over the vehicle on the right had side and start to steer me off the course.”

Sound Up: Streamliner crashes. Glen Barrett: “We have crash! We have a cash! Right at the 3-mile.”

Bar: “As I got out into the rough stuff, it actually skipped about 3 times. It sounded like a 45 gallon drum as it, as it hit the salt each time; and it rolled about 3 times, 4 times. Everything was really bashing really hard and really fast, until we finally came to a stop, fell over to our left, and that’s when I hit my seven-point harness and I bailed out.”

48:49 Bar OC

Key: Team Arrow Streamliner / Severely damaged and deemed

Bar: “I consider myself very fortunate that I was able to walk away from such a spectacular crash at 185 miles an hour. My hand had two fractures in 2 bones in the finger bones and uh, I had battered up knees, but really, we came out of it very well.”

Sound Up (replay) Glen Barrett: “We have a crash, we have a crash! Right at the three-mile!”

undriveable after failed “B” license attempt.

49:17 Dip to Black

Bar OC

Several shots of commuter cars on salt

Shots of Pit

CU on Bar in Helemet

Bar OC

Visual Transition

Bar: “Would I do it again? Yes I would do it again. Bonneville’s an amazing thing. Anybody that thinks they can go down there and win a record real easy is wrong. Bonneville’s a humbling experience, it’s a spiritual experience – the whole place is spiritual. It is a very, very different place. If you ask me if I have salt fever or if I got to experience that, I’d have to say yes. Um, it is a strange feeling and as I said it’s very spiritual there and when I was driving away, leaving it, I felt this tugging at me and tugging at me and tugging at me. And I can see why people go back year after year. It’s really a lot of fun.”

50:02 Roll Credits

51:00 Fade to Black