A few days ago Mooroopna's Noel Heenan was due to head off for the remote outback of South Australia, to cross the bull***t barrier and join the 200 mph club. Then COVID-19 arrived and things changed.
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John Lewis met the 72-year-old speedster as he prepared his Nascar for the annual speed week at Lake Gairdner.
Noel Heenan is talking about the need for an emergency exit.
He's usually a relaxed sort of bloke with a ready smile, but today he's deadly serious.
“When you need to do an emergency exit out of the car, you need a good system otherwise you'll bugger up,” he says bluntly.
He's standing next to his 1998 Thunderbird Nascar freshly painted with his Wombat Racing colours — the same colours he used when racing at Calder Park's Thunderdome in the early 1990s.
Under the bonnet is a petrol-fuelled V8 360 Ford Boss engine with the pulling power of 700 horses.
The car has no doors — just a driver's side glassless window to get in and out of.
The idea is to take about 3 km to get up to 320 km/h in a straight line and then put your foot down.
In the event of a flip at anything over 300 km/h, a swift exit is a good plan.
Noel reaches into the left-hand-drive car and pulls the steering wheel off.
“The first thing is the steering wheel — out of your way, done,” he says.
Next, there's a chest-level button release for the seat belts. Then there's the driver's side window net which is removed with one hand.
Then there's the exit system, done while wearing a neck brace and padded fire retardant body suit.
“Left hand out first, then your right hand, then your right leg and your left leg and you're out. The moment you start confusing all that you're done — you get tied up,” Noel says.
To demonstrate, he climbs in through the tiny window space with as much agility and speed as a man half his age.
Noel and a 15-strong band of mates have been working flat out for the past four months to get the Nascar beast ready for Dry Lakes Racers Australia's annual Speed Week next week when speed freaks from across the world were due to descend on the salt pans of South Australia's Lake Gairdner to try and blast through ever-increasing land speed records. Everyone in this world talks in miles per hour, perhaps because it doesn't sound so ridiculously fast as the metric version.
Noel hopes to break the 200 mph (320 km/h) barrier in his converted Nascar, but first he has to break a different sort of barrier — a 140 km dirt road which is the only way in to the remote area.
“We call it the bulls**t barrier, because it sorts out the artists from the real contenders,” he says with a dry smile.
Back in the 90s, Noel and his mates drove Holden HQs at the Thunderdrome, but his real love was the Nascars.
“About eight months ago I was talking to hot-rodder Rod Hadfield's wife over in Castlemaine and she said ‘oh, one our friends has a Nascar for sale'. I said, `where's he live?'. She said Byrneside.
“I couldn't believe it. He had it in a shed and when we get there — what is it? It's a bloody Thunderbird painted in Alan Kulwicki colours — he was a dead-set legend. He always raced it as an "underbird" because he always thought of himself as an underdog,” he says.
Now the car's all painted up and ready for the 200 mph assault across the salt.
Noel has been to Lake Gairdner before, racing what he calls a Lakester, a bullet-shaped speedster made from the drop tank of an aircaft bomber. He's also a motorcycle racer and a fanatatic fan of Mooroopna's only two-wheeled world champion, Jack Findlay. So Noel knows a bit about the thrills of racing, and, in particular, the potential spills of racing in a straight line on salt.
“Up to about 180 mph, nothing's a major problem. When you get to 200 mph all the air effects come into play, and the fight starts to keep it on the ground. This car weighs two tonne, there's lead down both sides to keep it down.
“The worst thing you can do out there is to be jerking on the steering wheel. Just act real gingerly on the steering wheel — let it have its head and just slowly bring it back to where you want it. Once the back takes control of the front and you lift out there — you're in trouble.”
He points to a little button at the rear of the car.
“If this thing was lying on its roof and revving its head off and you're knocked out — people can pull this lever and that kills the engine,” he says.
There's also a small cube hanging off the car's rear end that looks like a towbar. But there's nothing so ordinary as a towbar on this car — it's a parachute.
“Anything over 175 mph and you gotta have a parachute. You pull it at full throttle, and you feel it as a big push not a sudden bang.”
In a gesture of respect, and perhaps fatalism — the names of Noel's fallen speed heroes are listed in black paint on the Nascar's roof. Among the names are Shepparton's legendary stunt pilot Pip (Borrman) and Jack (Findlay).
The burning question is, what makes a man at 72 years old — an age when most blokes are putting on slippers instead of crash helmets and fire retardant suits — want to blast through the 200 mph barrier?
“Well, salt is an easy sport compared to the other sports we do. You just gotta go straight. And there's nobody else banging into you — you just go straight. Out on the salt, it's another world. It's from here to Melbourne long.
“Too many blokes, when they get to 70, they just turn off, and turn into old men,” Noel says.
Two days before Noel and his team were due to leave for Lake Gairdner, coronavirus slammed the brakes on the whole dream. But he's philosophical. He's putting the Nascar under wraps for next year.
“Naturally, we're all very disappointed. All the effort of the past few months and we were right on deadline, we were ready. But it's a smart move — I don't want my name on the roof,” he says with another dry smile.
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