ON SALT FLAT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 208, 3 September 1935, Page 5

ON SALT FLAT.

_____ ! MALCOLM CAMPBELL. | SPEED OF 300 M.P.H. HOPED. i GLITTERING WHITE TRACK, j I (From Our Own Correspondent.) SAN FRANCISCO, August 14. A cake of rock salt more than 200! square miles in area and averaging three feet in thickness lies glittering white in the torrid summer sun 100 miles west oi Salt Lake City in Utah, awaiting the next attempt of Sir Malcolm Campbell to drive an automobile at the speed of 300 miles an hour. None of the drivers who have driven their racing cars over the surface of the Boimeville salt flats, as the enormous I rock 'salt cake is known, has reached much over half that speed, but they werts trying for distance records and were j driving on circular tracks ten or twelve miles in length. Sir Malcolm will attempt his speed of five miles a minute over a straightaway course of thirteen miles—six miles to wain that tremendous momentum, a measured mile for the record and six miles to bring his six-ton Bluebird to a I safe stop. There is plenty of room for all of that on the salt flats and for most of the i distance, including that all-important, centre mile, the course is almost marble- , smooth. No more than tiny ripples on • the blinding white surface of the salt, I like the marks left by gently receding j waves on a sand beach, mar the rest of , the course and these will be carefully | scraped away before the Englishman j makes his test. , The rains of last winter, in drying beneath the fierce rays of the early summer sun, levelled and smoothed the surface of the salt bed beyond any human accomplishment. It will lie like tWit, awaiting the attempt at man's fastest travel oVer the earth's surface, until j next winter's rains cover it again. j

Just Enough Moisture. There is just enough moisture in the almost pure salt, automotive drivers say, to have a cooling effect on the tyres, which arc heated to a high degree by the friction of the surface of most race tracks. While the .salt may not provide as great traction as the sandy course at Daytona Beach, Florida, where Sir Malcolm attained his record of 270.816 miles an hour, these drivers say the straight stretch, unaffected by winds or tides, will enable him to reach high speeds much more readily. "There is no limit but the mechanical possibilities of the car," said John Cobb, British racing driver, after he had completed a twenty-four-hour run with two relief pilots this summer, and had set a hundred or so new records for varying distances. He predicted that Sir Malcolm would have no difficulty in realising his dream of a 300-mile pace. Except for a low dyke that parallels the iirst two miles at a distance of 100 yards, the Bluebird's projected course

lies straight across the heart of the vast salt plain. Its strength has been tested by a truck weighing ten tons, and at the middle point the big racing car could veer four or five miles in any direction without encountering an obstacle. Already telegraph wires have been struii"- into the heart of the salt desert to carry the story of Sir Malcolm'* newest ' effort at ever-increasing land speeds. A little town of tents and wooden shacks will arise shortly, the tents secured with railway spikes driven into the rock-like salt and the sleepers, or base timbers, of the buildings will be nailed to its surface. Water, like all other supplies, must be trucked into that deeert, where daytime summer temperatures range upward from 100 deg. until they are dissipated by the coolness that comes with the sinking of the sun behind the Toano Range acroes the Nevada line, which the Indians called "Mountain of the Night."