OUR QUICKEST MAN
Inspiration can hit you at any time and anywhere. It might be just as you’re nodding off to sleep; sitting on the john deep in thought; or, for Air Force avionics tech Dean Hart, while strapped into the rear of a P3 listening to the engine fire up ahead of a flight from Scotland to New Zealand. It was that moment, right then and there, as he decided a jet-powered dragster was the answer to the question playing in his head, that sealed Dean’s fate to eventually enter the land-speed record books. The question in his head was one that had arisen a few years earlier at the 2007 South Island Champs.
“This all started because of Honda K-series engines,” he recalls. “I was racing my CRX with a B18C in it, and a guy who’d put a K24 into an EK Civic drove past me with a whole lot of speed. It was one of those adapt-or-become-obsolete decisions, and I spent a lot of time thinking about how to go faster. The rumour was the guy with the EK spent 50 grand on the car, and I figured if I was going to spend that kind of money I was going to go a whole lot faster.”
After later sitting in a mate’s junior dragster and liking the feel of the enclosed cockpit — is that even a surprise for someone who spends his days working on planes? — Dean decided to
