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Gail is a musher in the 2012 Iditarod.
Gail is a musher in the 2011 Iditarod.
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Contact: www.dlra.com.au
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Bio
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The Phillip’s will have to temporarily say
goodbye to those close friends who helped them; Rod
and Carol Hadfield, Mike Davidson, Andy Jenkins of
Broken Hill, Ellis Mathews of Port Adelaide, and
all those other stalwarts of the sport of landspeed
racing down under. But they will be back to race on
the sunny, southern continent in the future.
* * *
Landspeed racing is over one hundred years old
and has been captivating the minds of people ever
since the piston engine was developed. A great
number of people have participated in the sport
over that long time span and many of them have been
women. The ladies have had to struggle to get the
right to race in this male dominated sport, but
their tenacity and talent have made them accepted
members of the landspeeding community. One young
lady who has dreams of going super fast is Gail
Phillips. She and her husband, Allen, have been
racing since 1995, and successfully setting
records, including the prestigious Bonneville 200
Mile an Hour (MPH) Club in 1999. The 200-MPH
Club
Gail Watson Phillips just set her first 200 MPH
record in an Austin Healey Sprite (Modified Sports
Class) at Bonneville in August 1999. contains all
the officially sanctioned runs over 200 mph, in all
types of automotive classes, AND it has to break a
previous record. Now that means there are a lot of
people who have run faster than 200, 300, 400 and
faster who have not made it into the club and who
cannot wear the famous red cap. My brother, David
Parks, broke Andy Granatelli's record in 1996, and
now has earned the right to wear the celebrated
cap. Perhaps there are 500 such people in the world
with such an accomplishment, but women record
setters are few.
One of them is Gail Phillips and she is out to
set and increase records both here in America and
overseas in Australia. I first met Gail at the
Gas-Up Party and Dry Lakes Hall of Fame in 1997. I
had just returned from Black Rock Desert in
Northern Nevada as Craig Breedlove and the Spirit
of America were dueling Sir Richard Noble and
Anthony Green in the Thrust SSC car. Gail and Allen
are members of the Gold Coast Roadster and Racing
Club, which is located throughout the Santa Barbara
and San Luis Obispo counties, of Central
California. This club belongs to the SCTA (Southern
California Timing Association), and some of its
members race at the El Mirage Dry Lake in Southern
California and at the Bonneville Salt Flats in
western Utah, on the Nevada border. Allen and Gail
have also been members of the Dry Lakes Racers
Australia (DLRA) and are currently residing in
Australia waiting for the racing season to begin at
Lake Gairdner in the Province of South Australia.
Now the Aussies of Australia and the Kiwis of New
Zealand have an old and hallowed tradition for
speed racing of all sorts. One Australian is Ken
Warby, who has set the waterspeed record of over
320 miles an hour. It isn't unusual to see the
Anzac (Australia and New Zealand) nations send
their finest drivers and cars by boat and great
expense to go racing at Bonneville.
Rarely do we have an American team return the
favor and travel half way around the world to go
and race in the Southern Hemisphere, but Gail and
Allen are doing just that. Lake Gairdner is beyond
description for landspeed racers. Bonneville is a
huge salt pan that has been degraded by potash and
chemical companies over the years, but even at its
most pristine, the salt flats in Utah are tiny
compared to Lake Gairdner. The trip to Gairdner is
a trek, not a jaunt. Australia is vast and the cars
have to be unloaded in Adelaide and shipped by
train north. Then the racecars are met by lorry, or
truck to you non-Aussies and then the bumpy ride
begins over rough roads until you reach the lakebed
and gaze out over a sea of white salt. The lake bed
stretches over sixty miles and a driver can get
lost on the great white salt, forcing his crew to
circle until they find him and bring him back to
base. Gail and Allen have bought a house in Victor
Harbor, just one hour south of Adelaide, the
capitol of South Australia, where they will
continue to work on the streamliner that they hope
to set records in when the racing season begins in
March. They have been members of the DLRA since
2001 and have made many friends among the Aussies,
who have helped make their stay in Australia
easier. The Phillips came back to Bonneville for
the start of the August racing season and brought
Mike Davidson with them. Davidson is a founding
member of the DLRA and an expert in Ford Flathead
motors and they toured the area checking up on all
the hotrod and car shows they could before heading
back to Australia. While the Phillips were at
Bonneville, they set a new record in the Grand
Touring E/GT class with their 1999 C-5 Corvette at
190 mph, breaking the old record of 184, set in
1978, and Gail was driving. They couldn't take both
cars to Australia, and in December they loaded
their Streamliner on the boat and sent it off. The
car will arrive in February and they will get it
prepared to run in March.
Their newest vehicle is a Streamliner which has
arrived in Australia in preparation for racing at
the DLRA's Speedweek event at Lake Gairdner in
South Australia.
Gail understands that you don't set records in a
vacuum. She has a team behind her that gives her
the horsepower and safety equipment to set those
records. The team is called P.O.P. Motorsports and
includes Doug Odom (Builder/Crew Chief/Driver),
Wayne Villard (Crew/Mechanic/Fabricator) and Al
Phillips (Crew/Logistics). Doug Odom has been
racing for a long time and is one of the best Crew
Chiefs in the sport as well as a top quality
driver. Landspeed racers don't have the ego that
other automotive racing sports seem to possess.
Landspeeders love to 'take' your record, then root
for you to take it back. They have a love for speed
and to test themselves against the clock and the
course, not against their fellow drivers and
friends. The brand new 25 foot streamliner will
have two engine sizes, class B and class C. Gail
will drive the class B engine in the streamliner
and Doug will pilot the class C engine and they
hope to set records with speeds over 300 mph. The
designation is B/GS, B/FS, C/GS and C/FS. The first
letter stands for the engine size. The second
letters after the /mark stands for gas streamliner
or GS and fuel streamliner for FS. They are hoping
for some really fast times. The Phillips had hoped
to break in the car and set records at Bonneville
in August 2006, but the car was slow to be
completed and bad weather made it impossible to
race. After they run in Australia in March, the
plan to bring the car back to the United States and
go after more records in August of 2007. Landspeed
records are not always easy to get the first time
out. A great deal of effort and research goes into
these customized cars. The team owners, builders
and racers have spent a lot of time and money
coming up with the best set-up. They often have the
car tested in wind tunnels and the engine dynoed
over and over again. They listen to other landspeed
racers and pick their brains for every innovation
possible. Yet no one knows how the car will do
until it is tested on the salt flats against the
clock. Many hearts have been broken over the years
on the salt.
Gail and Allen's vision began over a decade or
more ago and is still evolving. They knew Jack
Mendenhall, who set records in his roadster, Sally
the Salt Dancer, and who fiercely battled the
Wilson and Waters roadster for the record over the
years. Jack was also the founder of the Mendenhall
Gas Pump Museum in Buellton, California. This
museum is the headquarters for the annual Gold
Coast Roadster and Racing Club Gas-Up Party and Dry
Lakes Hall of Fame. Every September the Club hosts
over 800 members of the landspeed community from
around the world and honors a dozen or more
landspeeders who have earned the respect and
admiration of their peers. Mendenhall sadly passed
away a few years ago, but his son Mark and wife
Vickie are working hard to keep the museum going
and a beacon for the landspeeding world. Allen and
Gail purchased a Jack Mendenhall '32 Ford Roadster
HiBoy and are busy restoring it to use as a push
vehicle for their racing cars. After they return
from Australia they expect to show the roadster and
some of their other cars at the L. A. Roadster Show
in June. This is their first Ford, but their
special love is reserved for Corvettes, of which
they have had many. Gail told us about knowing Chic
Cannon, an original Safety Safari member for the
fledgling NHRA (National Hot Rod Association)
founded by Wally Parks back in 1951. Cannon had
restored the Mendenhall HiBoy that the Phillips
purchased. Cannon told them about his trek to
Australia in 1995, with Al Teague, Ken Walkey and
Chuck Salmen, called the "Thunder Down Under" trip.
These Americans helped the Aussies build up their
landspeed racing expertise and gave them hints how
the Americans have been doing it since the 1930's.
Now the Aussies are returning the favor and
bringing their cars and innovations to our shores,
including the incredibly gifted Rod and Carol
Hadfield from Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia.
Gail first set a 200 MPH Club record in 1999 in
a '59 Austin Healey Sprite, going 202 mph. She
raced the car and set records in Australia and the
United States. The car had a small block Chevy
engine and a single carburetor and she ran it on
gas. Her crew chief, Doug Odom, replaced the engine
with a 383 C.I. Chevy motor and moved the speed up
to 220 mph two years later in Australia. Gail has
set many records and holds 6 land speed records
from the Utah Salt Flats at Bonneville, the dry
lakes at El Mirage, California and Lake Gairdner in
Australia. She was the seventh woman to be inducted
into the Bonneville 200-MPH Club, though that list
is growing. Gail also belongs to the Bonneville
Nationals Inc (BNI), SCTA, the Utah Salt Flat
Racing Association (USFRA), the DLRA, the GCR&R
Club and the Australian Women's Motorsports Network
(AWMN). When they finish the DLRA meet at Lake
Gairdner, Australia on the 5-9th of March, 2007,
they plan to return to Bonneville to seek out more
records. Nissan's Racing Division USA (NISMO) has
offered them a Nissan 3 litre motor to put in their
streamliner. Allen is retired and Gail resigned in
2005 to spend all of her time following her dream.
“We don't have any children so think of the
race cars as our kids, and Doug as their
Grandpa,” said Gail. After they return from
Lake Gairdner, the Phillip’s will have to
temporarily say goodbye to those close friends who
helped them; Rod and Carol Hadfield, Mike Davidson,
Andy Jenkins of Broken Hill, Ellis Mathews of Port
Adelaide, and all those other stalwarts of the
sport of landspeed racing down under. But they will
be back to race on the sunny, southern continent in
the future.
Schedule
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