Speed!

Major Segrave’s “ Mystery S ”

YOUR hand lies inert on your steeringwheel. As the green light Hashes you close your hand, an act that takes approximately seven-tenths of a second. In his five-ton Mystery S, over the sands of Daytona Beach last Spring, H. O. D. Segrave, Marylander by birth and now the British speed king of the world, traveled more than 200 feet in seven-tenths of a second! Going the equivalent of about sixty city blocks a minute, he traveled faster by far than any man ever traveled over the ground. This winter,

Malcom Campbell of England,

Frank Lockhart and other Americans will undertake to go faster still!

Segrave traveled nearly five miles to get rolling over the mile stretch that he covered, as A. A. A. regulations require, both ways. He put that pro-

MAJOR SEGRAVE

jectile of his into first gear at forty-five miles an hour, into second at ninety and shifted into high at 142! How would you like to shift gears with a 500 h. p. Sunbeam motor in front of you and another aft, at 142 miles an hour? He went one mile at the rate of more than 207 miles an hour, averaged, up and back, 203 8 miles an hour! It took half a turn of his big steering-wheel, and half a mile, to make any adjustment in direction. It took him nearly four miles to slow down. And when he released his gloved hand from the gear shift, it was blistered all over from heat that had worked tip from

gears that had endured the unendurable, while his wheels and tires turned faster by far than wheels and tires had ever turned before.

“He can’t make better than about 170 miles an hour,” predicted the chief automotive engineer of a great American manufacturer of cars, “because centrifugal action alone will tear the tires from his hubs or at least the tread from his tires.”

But his tires withstood perfectly the terrific test. They were especially designed by Dunlop—founders of the Pneumatic Tire Industry. Practically every major record on the automobile racing books today was made on Dunlop Tires.

Tires, for such unbelievable speeds, can last but a short while—Segrave’s tires were designed to have a life of three maximum speed of 200 miles

minutes at an hour.

The racing tires to be used on cars attempting the world’s record in February will be special problems, notably Lockhart’s, because the writer is privileged to state that h is car w i 11 weigh approximately 2800 pounds loaded—not five tons as Segrave’s. Every part of a racing car calls for the greatest knowledge of engineering problems. What a battle it will be when the motors start roaring for 210 miles an hour—217 miles an hour—or even 225 miles an hour! That’s speed, brethren, that’s speed!

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