JEDDAH, 27 October 2006 — With a thunderous roar that shook the ground and streaming 20-meter tails of flame, the first jet-powered dragsters ever to visit the Kingdom scorched their way up the newly-opened Jeddah Raceway on Wednesday night. Driven by American Chuck Haynes — the cars’ owner — and Australian Gary Miosevich, the superfast dragsters left the wildly cheering and singing crowd stunned into silence.
“I don’t believe what I have just seen,” said Amar Al-Kuwaiti who was visiting Jeddah for his Eid holiday. “It was devastating, brilliant — just too much.”
In three standing-start runs over a one-eighth mile strip, the cars achieved breathtaking speeds. Haynes achieved the best run of the night in his car “Volcano,” the fastest jet dragster in the world. In a distance of just 200 meters — little more than the width of Tahlia Street from storefront to storefront — he broke through the 350 kph barrier in just 3.85 seconds, hotly pursued by Miosevich in “Gravity Storm” just a few meters behind.
Event Manager Ayman Akram said that the evening had been a great success. “The telephone companies made a fortune last night. The visitors were phoning their friends all during the races,” he said. “For Thursday’s races we have sold out all the 15,000 or so tickets.”
He added that the evening had a special edge to it. “The Kingdom is the first country to host the cars outside their home countries — the US and Australia. It’s a great honor for us as well as a landmark event.”
“We had to abbreviate the runs here,” said Haynes in a pre-race interview. “There is not sufficient run-out space to use the full quarter mile strip.”
Powered by stripped and modified jet engines — the sort used in military helicopters or executive jets — that have been boosted to provide 6000 lbs of thrust or more, the cars are hand-built in space frames and use twin parachutes for braking.
Haynes said: “They are specifically built for going down a quarter mile. The engines are actually out of jet aircraft, they use them in the helicopters like ‘Elvis’ that put out the forest fires. We take that same engine, modify it, and put a full afterburner on it.” These cars will run in excess of 300 miles (483 km) an hour during a quarter mile.
Haynes, in Volcano, has achieved sub five-second quarter miles at speeds reaching 519 kph.
While the crowds were almost exclusively young men, the drivers were decidedly mature. “It is an area where few young people have the discipline,” said Miosevich. “They instinctively touch the brakes too soon. That’s often fatal.” Miosevich is 50 years old while the impish Haynes is 55.
Since Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond crashed in the Vampire jet dragster in the UK and received serious injuries in mid-September, there have been six deaths in similar machines. One of the drivers was a 17-year-old girl and another a Japanese millionaire trying out his recently purchased jet car on a 300 kph test run.
