The run begins with a full-on drag-race start; a fast car like the Vette needs all the room it can get. Snapping through the gears, you're over 100 mph in the first quarter mile, but already, aerodynamic loads are rising progressively and acceleration fades. You build 100 mph in the first 14 seconds; in the next 14, you gain only about 35 mph. Just past the 0.75-mile point, the Stalker's display rises through 140 mph, and you first become aware that the Corvette is handling differently-it doesn't have the totally planted feel you're accustomed to, and driving down the middle of this scruffy two-lane road, you're uncomfortably aware of how narrow the surface is. You can only seem to maintain your position on the road within a couple of feet; your hands are busy making minor corrections while your eyes study the tach and speedometer to track your progress.
It's a long, agonizing pull beyond 140 mph. Acceleration has faded to only a mild level, and were it not for the gradually rising note of the engine and increasingly shrill hiss of the slipstream, you might not notice that you're accelerating at all.
And there's the sense of time. Those who've never been to top speed in a fast car imagine it as a great headlong rush-zing!-right on up to top speed. The reality is far more protracted. As the air claws at the bodywork, excess horsepower available for further acceleration lessens to a trickle. It's an aerodynamic-drag equation that seems to take forever to play out. In the Corvette, you spend 50 seconds accelerating from 140 mph to top speed. When you're already traveling faster over land than you ever have, that 50 seconds seems interminable-charged with anxiety, acute vigilance, and sheer delight. You keep tightening your grip on the steering wheel; some people even stop breathing. Relax. Enjoy it.
Above 160, you know you're running out of real estate-only about a mile to go-and you're counting each mph as it clicks over on the Vette's digital speedometer, until it finally stabilizes at top speed. You barely hear the engine now, its sound swallowed in the roar of ripping wind. You grant yourself the luxury of a moment to broaden your awareness, to look away from the instruments and the road ahead, and just soak it in. After all, you may never be in this place again.
That's when it hits you, the speed, the inertia. Blow a tire at this velocity, and you probably couldn't keep the car on the road. The crash would take forever. Shoot out into the lumpy scrub brush of the desert at 243 feet per second, and you'll likely ride home as an unwilling passenger in a Ziploc bag. Sandwich size.
But let's not fixate on the unpleasant possibilities. The three-mile shut-off point is fast approaching, and from this speed we can't afford to delay. The instant the radar team standing by the roadside flashes past, you're firmly into the brakes-and you check your mirrors to watch the poor bastards dive for cover as your stinging wake of gravel and dust sweeps over them. Still braking through 100 mph, you feel the pedal getting soft as fade sets in. Finally easing down through 65 mph, you pass the first familiar reference point in the last minute and a half. It's then that you realize how far you've climbed, and how much there is to see beyond the legal limit.
There's not a lot to it, really. Now if you could just convince your nervous system of that. Next time you come upon one of those radar trailers, try to be strong.
...
>>next page