Fighting fatigue even before they left, Sam and Johnson left for Bonneville and drove 800 miles from their home in Huntington Beach, California, nearly non-stop. Arriving at Wendover, Utah, in an exhausted state, they decided to spend the first day of the USFRA meet sleeping. Sam was now sick and Johnson near the hallucination point from lack of sleep. This would later prove to be a bad mistake.
I had been part of the car preparation madness, helping Johnson pull an all-nighter just before he was scheduled to leave. Fortunately, I caught a flight to Salt Lake City and a ride to the Flats, and was able to rest a bit while Johnson and Sam suffered over the road.
Doing the passes at a USFRA event will qualify the driver for a coveted SCTA license. Johnson's mission for this day was relatively simple, accelerate to 130mph within a mile, average between 130 and 140mph at the speed trap (set between the 1- and 11/8-mile markers) and back up the pass to enter the 130mph club. Hopefully, there would be enough time for Sam-also an experienced road racer-to get her license too.
A car had blown its engine on the course and oiled up over a mile of the surface, forcing a long delay while the mess was cleaned up. I noted an old VW that was apparently a record holder in two classes. For one class, the owner merely removed two sparkplugs to make it a two-cylinder. A riding lawnmower blatted by in a lengthy attempt to set some sort of record for lawnmowers and a unicycle tottered down the course as well.
Johnson's B12 had been getting mixed reviews in the staging line. It seems that a Japanese compact is something unusual out on the salt. A small minority admired it, although many scoffed, giving disdainful looks.
After an agonizing wait for the unicycle to make it though the timing traps, Johnson was finally sent out. Accelerating hard, the unique hiss and roar of the unmuffled SR20 made many in the staging lanes look up from whatever they were doing. Interestingly enough, the sight of the red brick disappearing faster than any car previously witnessed seemed to get people's attention.
Johnson feathered the throttle, as he was getting severe wheelspin (even at only 14psi of boost) through second and third gears. Shifting into fourth caused a moment of excitement, the car becoming unstable at over 100mph, slewing sideways. We could see it from the pits and became concerned as the car yawed nearly 45 degrees from straight at high speed. Keeping calm, Johnson pushed the throttle to the floor to stabilize his front-wheel-drive Sentra. When the car returned to the staging area, a crowd of admirers formed around it. Even those who had turned up their noses now came over. This time, The Little Sentra That Could got looks of respect.
It took Johnson less than half a mile to reach 130mph, feathering the throttle so as not to exceed that speed. However, in between watching the tach, GPS, A/F ratio meter and the rest of the gauges while fighting instability, Johnson suffered a sensory overload and shut his car down at the beginning of the timing traps. He didn't have the necessary 130mph average needed for that run to count as one of his two passes.
No problem, we thought, there was still the next day to complete this task and another after that to do additional runs. Unfortunately, Mother Nature decided not to cooperate and the heavens opened up with rain. As the forecast indicated only a slight chance of light showers, we were sure this would not amount to any great delay and could return to run tomorrow. We retreated to the plush resorts of Wendover, leaving our pit equipment in place.
Awaking and driving out to the flats before dawn, we were met with a dismal surprise. Overnight, Bonneville Salt Flats had become Lake Bonneville. The entire area was covered by a few inches of brine. Although watching the sun rise over this mountain-rimmed reflecting pool was a beautiful, awesome sight, it was still disappointing. We wanted to race and it was painfully obvious that there would be no more racing until the next year.