Auto racing: Nature hurting Rick Vesco’s run at elusive 500-mph mark

Rockville • What if you spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars building the world's fastest wheel-driven car and had no place to prove it?

That is the situation facing Rick Vesco for the second straight year as the longtime land-speed racer and mechanic prepares his Turbinator II for what he hoped would be an assault on the elusive 500-mile-per-hour mark during Speed Week at the Bonneville Salt Flats.

Speed Week 2015 has been canceled due to mud and water on the course. Other events scheduled for September and October on the salt are still on the docket if conditions improve. One possible scenario would be to run only short courses this year, which would basically eliminate cars, such as the Turbinator, that require the long course to set records.

Vesco said the situation affects all Salt Flat racers. There were nearly 600 registered for the now-canceled 2015 Speed Week.

"It is frustrating when you are dealing with Mother Nature," said the veteran racer who has been coming to the Salt Flats since 1953. "Some years, skiers don't get to ski."

The southern Utah car designer is optimistic that events scheduled in September and October may be held if monsoon rains quit.

"We need the sunshine to come out and stay out like it is supposed to," he said. "It has got to get hot enough to dry that little layer of mud. We can run on a dry lake bed. It just needs to get dry, or at least dry enough that it packs."

'The biggest challenge' • Meanwhile, he is also hoping to organize a conference where parties involved in using and managing the salt flats can get together and try to agree on reasons why the salt flats are shrinking and solutions to fix the problem. Theories about water levels, mining activity, brine shrimp farms and even the building of Interstate 15 have all been floated as reason the famed race track is deteriorating to the point where 100 years of land-speed trials are now in jeopardy.

Inside his beautiful pueblo-style home near the Grafton ghost town at the base of Zion National Park, Vesco has stacks of information and studies on why the Salt Flats are deteriorating. It is no accident that, like many land-speed racers, he is a big supporter of the Save the Salt campaign.

"The course and weather conditions are the biggest challenge," Vesco said. "We are ready to go as fast as possible, but the salt is not good enough and there is not enough traction. The track is getting shorter and shorter. … International records can hardly be set there anymore."

In fact, the racers hoping to go for the 500-mile record are looking for other spots. One possibility is an 18-mile salt bed that resulted in the 1980s pumping project to relieve Wasatch Front flooding by the Great Salt Lake. It is on the edge of a military bombing range, so permission would be needed and the public would likely not be allowed to watch.

Still, Vesco continues to work on the Turbinator and the "family" Little Giant car.

The world's fastest wheel-driven car was built in Brigham City, raced on the Bonneville Salt Flats and now sits in a garage near the banks of the Virgin River.

The insides of the famed 36-feet-long Turbinator streamliner were exposed in the garage adjacent to Rick and Jinx Vesco's beautiful home.

As Speed Week approaches every year, Rick Vesco spends about 12 hours a day, seven days a week tinkering with the refurbished streamliner his late brother Don drove to a record 458.481 miles per hour, with a top speed of 470 in 2001.

"My wife opens the door and throws me a sandwich once in a while," Vesco said as he labored over a difficult fuel pump issue in a garage filled with bolts, tools and memorabilia dating back to the 1930s, when his late father, Johnny Vesco, got the speed bug in California.

The need for speed • According to Bonneville historian Louise Noeth, there are basically three records that form the holy grail of land-speed racers.

The fastest cars are thrust- or jet-powered vehicles, such as the ones Craig Breedlove and Gary Gabelich made famous in the 1960s. British driver Andy Green set that record of 763.035 miles per hour on Nevada's Black Rock Desert in 1997.

The second are the wheel-driven special-construction streamliners, such as the original Turbinator in which Don Vesco set the current record in 2001 and the one Rick Vesco and driver Don Spangler are trying to break in, Turbinator II, powered by a Chinook helicopter engine with 4,213 horsepower.

The third record is for production vehicles made by companies such as Chevrolets, Volkswagens, Fords or Dodges.

Rick Vesco, who has driven the "family" 444 Little Giant Car at more than 300 miles per hour, was at one time among the top motorcycle racers in the world. He once even took actor and racer Steve McQueen's place in the Las Vegas Mint 400 race in 1968 after the actor broke his toe on a set.

But Vesco elected to be the designer, and to let his friend Spangler (whom he worked for as a product development engineer at Hooker Headers in the 1970s) drive the car.

"I like both," Vesco said as he took a rare break from work in the memorabilia- and tool-filled garage. "But it is hard to do both at the same time. You need to either drive or work on them. I know everything about the cars. I am the worker bee. I don't want to forget anything."

The goal right now is to become the first driver to average 500 mph or faster by making two runs within a one-hour period, with the speed measured at the one-mile timing trap.

The Turbinator II has plenty of challengers, which is why so many racers look forward to Speed Week.

After a frightening wreck on one of the rare driving days on the wet Salt Flats last year, George Poteet's crew rebuilt Speed Demon. Oregon's Marlo Triet has 15 years invested in his Target 550 Streamliner. Danny Thompson, son of famed driver Mickey Thompson, has a car capable of going over 500 miles per hour. So does Utah's Nish family.

So why has Don Vesco's record stood for 14 years?

Noeth, the historian, offers a simple explanation.

"Because it's hard," she said. "My God, it's hard to do. A lot of folks can pull off one good number, but there is such a beating on the mechanical parts to create such a perfect symphony for what is a 5-mile drag race. To repeat it, it's tough."

Innovation a labor of love • Vesco said there is nothing on the Turbinator that can be bought in a store. Everything — from the wheels, drive shaft and transmissions — is basically handmade.

Vesco said his brother Don discovered the Chinook helicopter engine with a guy working at the Hooker Header Company. The two watched the unlimited-class hydroplane boat races.

"My brother called me in Brigham and said, 'These boats are so fast, they go 200 in the no-wake zone,' " Vesco recalled. "'We've got to find an engine.' "

(The boats got the "unlimited" designation because there were no restrictions on engine displacement when their league was founded.) Legendary Salt Flats racer Art Arfons helped the Vescos, who opened a motorcycle shop in Brigham City in 1973, find the first of those engines. The one used now cost about $170,000.

"Mechanically, everybody is stressing their equipment to the point where it wasn't even designed to run as hard as we are running them," said Vesco, adding that "the Bonneville Salt Flats is the proving ground for all the people who manufacturer after-market parts."

He said all kinds of patents have come out of Salt Flats land-speed-record attempts.

Glen Barrett, who was the chief timer for the Southern California Timing Association from 1983 to 2003 and has been coming to Bonneville since 1953, timed Don Vesco's record. He now works on Rick Vesco's crew and lives nearby in Washington County.

"I never had much interest in the jet cars," he said. "They were not hot rods. … Don's run of over 450 and up to 470 miles per hour, that was the one that really woke people up."

Rick's love of speed came from his father, Johnny, who began using Model T and A Ford engines to race in Muroc, Rosamond and Dry Lakes tracks in California. Johnny and partner George Riley built cars that were initially called tank lakesters. But, after the experimental 444 ran in 1957, the vehicles would eventually be known as streamliners.

Vesco, now nearly 70, still has trouble not working. When developing the original Turbinator, he worked 51 hours a week at the motorcycle store in Brigham City and then another 32 hours a week on the car. Even these days, he said, when he tries to take a break by going fishing, he gets bored and starts thinking about ways to improve the race cars.

Why does he work so hard?

"I enjoy building things," Vesco said.

Whether they get the record run may not ultimately come down to whether all their hard work pays off, but whether a course can be cobbled together at the deteriorating salt flats.