2001 DLRA Lake Gairdner Speed Week

Preliminary Report This years event was a huge success, with 36 vehicles and 55 drivers making the trek to Lake Gairdner. There were several best speeds attained, many licencing passes achieved and even a world record. Most notable was the 205MPH by Gail Phillips in her little Austin Healey, the 181MPH from in the Moe Boys XA Falcon Coupe. There were also several new members to the "Spin Doctors" club, Bob Bowman was the first, then Keith Stamp the obliged the crowd on his first pass and in the same car Steven Stamp and Greg Hamilton. Many new cars made their debuts this year including Rod Hadfield's new Commodore.

The track was not as good as it has been in other years with some drivers describing the surface as looking like a moonscape, covered with little (and not so little) craters. The drag that was used to prepare the track was only mildly successfull in removing these. There was also a set of humps just after the start of the 3 mile and the 4th mile. Many drivers choosing to use the full long track to attain their best speeds.

The weather was hot, most days hovering around the 100 degrees F mark with about 36% humidity. The winds in the morning were usually slight and from the north, in the afternoon these would swing around to the east and become stronger and guster with the track being closed on the Wednesday afternoon. Typically Friday provided the best conditions.

Most of Monday was taken up with track preparation and setting up of the timing equipment with a couple of shakedown runs later in the day. There was a record 83 passes made on the Thursday.

Please come back to this page over the next couple of weeks as the information will be added as it becomes available. All photos to get captions. A full race report by the Secretary will follow soon. Note: the results are only preliminary.

Preliminary Results of Speed Trials 2001, March 5th - 9th 2001 - Peter Noy, Chief Timer
Any application for amendments to these results must be made on the Results and Records Amendment Form.

Records shown are either Open or a Record prior to this meeting.
Speeds shown in RED are records set for this year

Select image to enlarge

The Bowman "Team Speed" and "Club Animal" setting up camp on the salt.	Bob Bowman working on the Ford motor on the Monday.	John Lynch's crew in a happier mood, before the blower belt let go!
Bob Ellis from Queensland, unloading his T-Bucket	Rod Hadfield's brand new Commodore.	It's a '96 body, purpose built for the salt.
Driver virtually sits in the back seat.	Motec digital readout.	Motor for this event is a Chuck Salmen built KB hemi.
On the return run from it's first shakedown run.	Rod has also built a new transporter.	Fitted out with heaps of storage. Now if he can just get it to go a little faster...
Rod asked Geoff Rea to follow him out on the shakedown run. It was very much the old and the new with's Geoff's '32 coupe a veteran of 8 visits to the salt.	Our American visitors this year were Gail Phillips and Chuck Odom. They had their container delivered direct to the salt.	Kevins Saville was back again with his 671 blown Holden six.
Geoff Rea in scrutineering.	There had to be many minor modifications to accomodate the Chuck Sharpe motor.	All hands on deck to fix a flooding carb.
Drag Bike from Queensland	XP Falcon with 331 Holden Stroker
Phil Arnold working on his single pot screamer.	Mark Hadfield's Mustang looking as good as ever.	Ray Charlton's '32 Roadster
Here's a good example of the dust you get coming in, Norm Harding's 34 Roadster, 426 Ford powered.	That's better, a bit of compressed air removes all the dust.	Another newcommer was Gary Meyers with his Burnout Championship Mustang.
You get them all at Lake Gairdner, even a 1920 Dodge Speedster, which was on display at the F1 Grand Prix in Melbourne the day before.	Leaving the pits is Peter Arundel on the Indian	Returning to the pits #114
Peter Wilmer '95 Trimuph Daytona	End of Monday