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October 13, 2009

Car owned by local sets land speed record

By Robert Barron, Staff Writer

A car owned by Ames’ Brent Hajek shattered five speed records recently, clocking 255.764 mph at Bonneville Salt Flats on Sunday to set a the land speed record for a vehicle running on alternative fuel.

Hajek’s experimental 2010 Ford Mustang ran on E-85/soy fuel and after a week of illness and frustration, driver Danny Thompson set the land speed record.

“We broke five speed records in seven days with the Cobra and the land speed car, the experimental 2010 Mustang,” Hajek said. “The Mustang has E/85 soy fuel and soybean-based paint and body panels.”

He will take the cars to a number of car shows, then to more races, Hajek said.

“What’s going on here, we bridged the gap between the chemists to develop it and the engineers who build these cars,” he said. “We went to the chemists and asked them to make soy-based plastics and asked them to make the body panels.”

The chemists made a soy resin used in standard fiberglass molding and it worked, he said. Hajek said it was as strong as fiberglass and lighter.

The new Mustang has a different body style and Hajek’s team was the first to get it, he said.

The crew was at Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah for five days and battled a leaking head gasket, which required replacing the engine, along with a bout of the flu. Qualifying stopped at noon, but officials allowed the car to run and it set the record. They then dragged it back to the start of the course and did it again, Hajek said.

Previously, Hajek’s crew set four speed records in a Cobra Jet dragster. The car set two quarter-mile and two eighth-mile records in AA stock automatic and A stock automatic categories.

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