Riding in a 1927 Ford Model T Roadster

OK, so I didn't run exactly 170. It was 169.492, and in land speed racing, there’s no rounding up. That extra 0.508 mph is a frustrating barnacle on the hull of glory, a nagging keepsake of the battle of tenths that has been fought on Daytona’s sand, SoCal’s dry lakes, and Bonneville’s salt since before a hot rod was called a hot rod. But this time it was at the Maxton Monster Mile in North Carolina.

Still comparatively unknown, the East Coast Timing Association (ECTA) was founded in 1995 by a group of Bonneville racers hankering for top-speed action east of the Mississippi. The ECTA dug up—literally—an abandoned WWII runway at the former Laurinburg-Maxton Army Air Base, removing 40 years of dirt and weeds at the site where glider pilots trained for the attack on Normandy.

Fortunately, club members didn’t unearth the wartime ordinance or barrels of mustard gas rumored to be buried nearby, but they did discover nearly 2 miles of concrete that has become land speed racing’s newest venue.

As a devotee of El Mirage and Bonneville, I’d hankered for the Maxton experience and got the opportunity thanks to Keith Turk, the ECTA’s most caffeinated fanatic and unofficial PR agent. Turk swindled my way into the cockpit of a ’27 T roadster owned by Brett and Regan Yates for a behind-the-wheel feel of LSR on pavement. The experience proved that first-time gearheads on a budget can get involved and have a hysterically good time with the laid-back ECTA scene.

The Yates’ race car is a simple fiberglass T on homemade, stretched A-type rails with a small Chevy and a TH350 trans. There’s no science to it, yet it’s a multiple-record holder and big-smile fun for a total investment of less than $10,000. Brett and Regan both drive and wrench (she’s just a few mph slower than he is), but at the April event it was my turn to shoe.

My rookie pass was a prescribed 100-mph shakedown. Since there was no standing record in B/FMR, that was the class the Yates entered for my first pass of 107 mph. When breaking records, ECTA members are awarded two points for every mph they run over the existing record, so this slow record gave the Yates plenty of room to score big at the next meet. The ECTA allows cars to run-up class; for example, with no engine change, this C/Gas Modified roadster can also run in B/, A/, and AA/GMR for progressively larger-displacement engines. Gas engines can also run in Fuel classes.

To take advantage of this, my subsequent record runs were in A/FMR. As I graduated to faster and faster clockings, I got slower in the cockpit, the suspension harshness seemed smoother, the track became more familiar, and—dang it—the trans started to go away. By the time I’d made the best run of 169.492, there was no Second gear at all. Even so, the lightweight roadster ran in First-to-Third at just 4 mph slower than its best-ever pass.

Unlike El Mirage, Maxton provides the opportunity for as many runs as you want; there were 427 in 2001’s opening weekend. While illegal at other venues, you can drive race cars to and from the pits, which is remarkably convenient. Also differing from any other land speed surface, the traction-abundant concrete runway—though choppy in places—really lets you put the power down early with a minimum of peddling. It’s practically a 1-mile drag race with 132-foot timing traps (the same trap distance as El Mirage). The pucker comes from two mild doglegs, one about 300 feet from the start, the spookier one a third of a mile past the shutoff, where the course also necks down to about half its width and gets pretty sandy.

I also drove Bob Gribble’s 200-mph Busch Grand National car at Maxton and learned that big-powered cars need some finesse around the first turn (don’t shift there), but the Yates roadster was only a bit loose. The curve in the runoff road seems daunting in theory, but it’s fine if you don’t panic. On one pass the ’chute didn’t open on the roadster, so I coasted through the turn and the sand, rather than braking, to avoid upsetting the car at speed. Even with rear-wheel-only brakes, I didn’t touch the pedal until about 30 mph at the turn onto the exit road—at which point I was ready to head right back to the starting line.

The entire experience let me imagine what it must have been like in the early days of Bonneville. From the relaxed environment to the grassroots cars, from the WWII roots to guys wrenching out of their hotel rooms at the Pine Acres Lodge, this was the essence of land speed racing. Best of all, despite that measly 0.508 mph, I got my name in the ECTA record books. Someday that record will be obliterated, but in 50 years I’ll be able to claim “I was there when...” And you can never take that away.