Charles Kuralt called the road between Las Vegas and Ely Nevada "the loneliest road in America." He was correct enough so that anyone who has made the 12-hour automotive pilgrimage from San Diego to northwest Utah will never again believe that we are a crowded nation.

The Vesco family has made many pilgrimages to many lonely places in their quest for land speed records. Their quest has made El Mirage and Muroc and the salt of Bonneville holy ground for them in the fifty years since John Vesco began the family tradition with an Offenhauser powered speedster. The sons Vesco, Don and Rick, have since set their own share of records with their own vehicles.

Don, racing at Bonneville since the '50's, has held 18 motorcycle and 5 automotive land speed records. Rick, who first drove Bonneville at 16, joined the prestigious Bonneville 200 MPH Club in 1978, and has run the  salt at 300.3mph.

For nearly two decades, Rick has also been involved in Save The Salt, Inc, an organization that now annually returns 1.7 million tons of salt to the flats saving this natural phenomenon from harvested encroachment. 

The first impressions of the salt flats are eerie and cannot be easily conveyed by words. Words like "flat" or "huge" are not of proper scope. Photos fail in accuracy, as no camera lens is wide enough to fully circumnavigate the edges. The distant mountains appear to float on the stark white surface, their distant perspective lost in the heat haze.  From the start line of the FIA "long course, " the finish line is unobservable...it is below the horizon.

Although humans have been in evidence here for over 10,000 years, the first Europeans traveled its immensity only after 1824. Westward bound wagon trains attempted traverses of the salt only to have their oxen die of thirst when they were able to travel but a few miles per day.

In order to take the FIA record, Don needs to cover a mile of this alien landscape in less than 8 seconds.

TeamVesco 2001 is an amalgam of technical wizards, fabrication gurus, and sheer gear head muscle that is single-mindedly dedicated to a NASA-like pursuit of ultimate speed. Guided by the "designing/driving" capabilities of Rick and Don, the team is the star of the salt and their vehicle is the "Turbinator."

The Vesco machine is classified by the SCTA and the FIA as a turbine car with a weight designation over 2201 pounds which puts it in class III/T. Essentially, this is an unlimited "wheel-driven" class in weight, power, and body shape requiring only a minimum of four wheels and an adherence to the rules of safety and physics.

The "Turbinator," which weighs less than a full-sized pick-up, is 31 feet long and powered by a Lycoming T55 L11 gas turbine from a Chinook helicopter. 3800hp from the engine output shaft is fed to the four drive wheels by toothed belts via 2:1 reduction gears. Tires are experimental  items that will cost nearly $8 per second for the required two-way run totaling about 140 seconds. 

The engine breaths 32 pounds of air per second when running at speed (a cubic foot weighs only about .070 pounds). That's over 450 cubic feet per second. It inhales the volume of an average American home every three seconds. 

Although capable of burning a half-pound of Jet A kerosene per horsepower/hour, Turbinator will burn less than 5 gallons per run. Tire restraints allow approximately 60% power. 

The course for the FIA World Record has been dragged smooth in a hundred yard wide stripe that stretches for approximately 12 miles. Two black stripes, arrow-straight, run parallel for that duration. From the pits, we can see perhaps 5 pairs of red markers that straddle the twin stripes and measure mile intervals. One end is an inconsequential dot five miles to the right and the other, far to the left, is nearly unseeable. Between these two extremes, there are the "timed miles." 

On race-day, I ride in the truck with the parachute recovery team to the start line of the FIA long course. Don, seemingly blasé with the tension gets squeezed into the cockpit and the crew buttons the canopy. We drive down the ten-mile course to our assigned mid-point spot and wait for the radio call. 

The "Course Clear" and "Car On The Course" calls come from the officials and Vesco spools up and is gone. Five miles away, we see the car long before we can hear it since it rooster-tails a long plume of salt from its four drive-wheels. The chutes pop and the car decelerates another two miles as we race to the end point. The crew assumes their preordained positions and "Turbinator" is quickly loaded onto the trailer while the official clicks his stopwatch. The clock starts when the car comes to a stop. FIA time is a precious and non-renewable resource. 

I stay out of the way while Don walks around joking with the crew and the hangers-on. A crewmember yells out the remaining time every few minutes while we wait for the time slip. The radio crackles with the news...one way---he's 20 mph above the existing wheel-driven record. 

Don is calm as the crew works feverishly. The tires are fine, the car is refueled with another few gallons of Jet-A, and the cameras are refilled with fresh videotape. Don puts his Nomex back on and gets back in the car. 

We, in the parachute car, didn't get to see the launch for the first run but we get to see this one up-close. The turbine is spooled up, the car whines like a demon and accelerates towards the horizon. 

The car recedes in the bright white distance like Nature is racking a variable focal-length lens. One instant "Turbinator" is with us, and 3 seconds later, it's a quarter mile away and moving at over 300mph. 

Vesco passes the flying mile giving him average record run of 458.440 breaking the previous record by 40mph. This is a HUGE chunk of time at Bonneville. 

We race to the end...a long drive of 12 miles to a crowd of ecstatic Vesco family members and the calm and collected Don. The family unfurls a pre-made banner celebrating the new FIA record speed, the new record numbers added trackside in black tape for the photo session next to the hot, creaking car. 

Don deflated the left-rear tire while entering the speed traps but his superb reaction times allow him to keep the car on course and upright. Men have been killed here due to less equipment failure than this, but Don is nonplussed. 

The pressure is off at that point. Don wants to change tires and go for 500mph but Rick, the Consummate Organizer, knows that this new record will attract sponsors for next year and perhaps get the enterprise off of the Vesco checkbook. 

Vesco's plans for next year include modifying the car to increase the available airflow to combat heat build-up and add combustion air. 

There is a bumper sticker seen at Bonneville that says "Time Only Counts Between The Lights." It's true. 

500mph is certain to fall. And TeamVesco will be the ones that do it.