The salt at Bonneville is usually best for high speed running in August and September. There was a gap in the Grand National schedule in September. Darlington was to be run on Monday, September 6 and the next race was Martinsville on Sunday, September 26. As it turned out, Isaac was fourth at Darlington and won at Martinsville, so Bonneville didn't interfere with the race program. Harry Hyde made reservations with the Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce (who at that time scheduled the salt) for the week starting Sunday, September 12, 1971. Harry also arranged for the

Nord Krauskopf asked me if I would go to Bonneville with them to help with the car set up, at K & K's expense, not Chrysler's. I had always been interested in Bonneville and jumped at the opportunity. I took two weeks vacation to go to Bonneville. I had taken two weeks vacation earlier in the summer and did not need the remaining two.

The car that Harry took was his Daytona/Talladega race car, the one that set the record at Talladega and had been on the pole for both the April and August, 1970 Talladega races. Harry put his Daytona/Talladega qualifying engine in the car and took along five or six more engines. When you build up a series of engines that are as identical as possible, there is usually one engine that has more power than the rest. You could measure everything and never explain why this engine is good. But when you find an engine like that you hang on to it. This engine had never raced, it was only a qualifying engine. It had the single four barrel carburetor that NASCAR required on the Hemi engine. Production Hemi engines always had two carburetors and USAC always allowed two carburetors in their stock car racing circuit. The two carburetor package was worth about 40-50 horsepower over the single carburetor. While this additional power was available Harry never felt that it was necessary to change the manifold to get this power. The single carburetor was fast enough to get the speeds he wanted. The car was run in what was supposed to be its normal NASCAR configuration, although (among other things) it looked to have about an inch less ground clearance, and the gas tank held a bit more than the allowed 22 gallons.

Harry took two trucks plus one race car. At that time all of the NASCAR teams used a box body truck and towed the race car on a trailer. He took five or six mechanics. Nord Krauskopf was there of course, as well as Bill Brodrick of Union Oil. Bill then had red hair and beard and in later years they were gray. He is the man we used to see on TV in NASCAR winner's circles organizing the picture taking, etc. He got the job by being there and doing it. For years he was a NASCAR fixture until there was a reorganization at Union Oil in 1997 and he was fired. Bill came out to generate publicity for Union Oil in conjunction with the run. Harry was running Goodyear tires, but Goodyear had not sent a tire engineer. The tires had been mounted and balanced in Charlotte before they left. They were basically a Talladega tire.

I flew from Detroit to Salt Lake City on Sunday, September 12, 1971, rented a car and drove west about an hour and a half to Wendover, Utah. It was around 8:00 or 9:00 PM when I got there. I checked in at the motel, which was very basic as I recall, and told Harry I was there. They had gotten in on Friday or Saturday and had set up their operation on the salt. The two trucks were parked about twenty feet apart and a canvas cover was stretched between them, as it was needed for shade. The race car and the two trucks stayed on the salt and at least one crew member stayed out there to watch them at night. On Sunday they had made some preliminary runs for the flying mile and kilometer runs and were planning to make the official runs Monday morning, when Petrali had the clocks set up.

At about 7:00 AM or so we had breakfast and headed out to the salt. By the time I got there the car was ready to run. Bobby took the car to the end of the available straightaway and headed north. We were all standing at least 1/4 mile away from the straightaway. We heard the car before we saw it. It sounded great, but it didn't look very fast with nothing to judge it against. After Bobby stopped the crew went down to check over the car. I don't think that they even changed tires. FIA rules required that the return run be made in less than 60 minutes after the first run. Bobby came back much sooner than that. After a few minutes Joe Petrali came out of his timing trailer with the numbers: 216.946 MPH for the flying mile and 217.368 MPH for the flying kilometer. These numbers were arrived at by averaging the times in each direction.