UNTIL THE VERY END of the BUB meet, Akatiff believes he can come out on top. But that starts to seem doubtful. With a day and a half of racing to go, he discovers that a broken metal shaft has left a crucial part of the Ack Attack’s chain–drive transmission vulnerable. He has no replacement, but he does have superglue.

“Let’s fill this thing up with J–B Weld and take the play out of the part,” says Akatiff, holding a fist–size metal housing. “Feel that bearing. I think it feels pretty good.”

Robinson doesn’t care if Akatiff uses spit to keep the streamliner together—he just wants to race. “Rocky was with Manning’s team for years and Denis couldn’t get it done,” says his wife, Tricia, while a brooding Robinson puts his helmet into a car that will taxi him to the start line. “Now he feels like he did all the groundwork for their record. He wants it back.”

Soon, Robinson drives the Ack Attack down the course. The J–B Weld holds, but Akatiff, looking for more power, has played with the computerized engine–control system to the point that the engines run poorly. Robinson aborts.

The Ack Attack eventually runs down the track again, and again, but a transmission problem develops. On the morning of the last day, with 20 minutes left before the meet ends, one of the transmission chains breaks. Robinson coasts through the traps at 102 miles per hour. Thanks in large part to the perfect conditions, two streamliners have eclipsed Campos’s record. But, in the end, Akatiff and Robinson have lost.

After the meet, Wheeler shrugs and decides that Manning’s victory must have been fated. “Denis has had a lot of misfortune,” he says. “Perhaps he just deserved to have it go his way.”

That’s not logical enough for Akatiff, who wonders whether Carr’s run was legitimate. “Maybe a bird flew across the timing lights,” he theorizes. He then explains that he’s already redesigned the Ack Attack’s failed part and is pondering ways to squeeze more oomph from the twin Hayabusas. Meanwhile, he says, Robinson is raring to go, Wheeler is searching everywhere for new rubber, and Manning will obviously return. After all, it’s his meet.

When I remind Akatiff that he was supposed to walk away from Bonneville after breaking the record, he corrects me. For him, land–speed racing is still unfinished business.

“I wanted to leave with the record,” he adds. “But this is actually great. Now we have a goal. It’s to go real, real fast.”