So what kind of trip did Joey Arrington and Tommy Hurley have Monday at Kennedy Space Center?
It was a blast.
It was a gas.
It set a new record.
Hurley drove a machine prepared and powered in Martinsville by Arrington to a new land speed record for a stock car as the Ridgeway resident hit 253 mph on the 3-mile concrete strip at the Shuttle Landing Facility at Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The speed set by the “Martinsville Missile” broke the old record of 244.9 mph set in 2007 at Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah by Russ Wicks, who also piloted a car with an engine built by Arrington.
Hurley, a 50-year-old Ridgeway resident with a drag racing background, drove a rebuilt 1969 Dodge Daytona Charger with a 1,000-horsepower, 358-cubic-inch motor to the new record. The vehicle and the record-setting attempt were backed by the VA250 Car Project, part of a national motorsports and engineering initiative commemorating the 250th birthday of the United States.
Arrington, a Franklin County native and the son of former NASCAR driver Buddy Arrington, stood aside the 300-foot-wide tarmac where 78 space shuttle landings took place and watched Hurley roar past on the record run.
“When you’re standing there, the engine’s screaming and it’s talking junk to you,” Arrington said. “The car is moving so fast. You can see it, but when it’s right in front of you, you’ve got to sort of wait for it to get past you and then you pick it up.
“Truly, it is so satisfying. When you accomplish something like that and you can visually see it, it makes noise, it makes your hair stand up.”
Hurley made two passes on the concrete surface. The first was basically a test run, hitting 226 mph.
“We went out and shook the car down, made sure everything worked for Tommy, and it did,” Arrington said. “Everybody just buckled down, got it turned around and went at it again.”
Hurley, who said his top speed on a one-eighth mile drag strip has been 165 mph, went through the gear box cleanly in a ride that took just under 1 minute. Based on in-car video, the Henry County native shifted out of first gear at 55 mph, reached third gear at 80 mph and hit fourth gear at 190 mph.
It took Hurley approximately 34 seconds to achieve the target speed of 250, topping out at 253 before he fired the twin parachutes from the rear of the car that slowed the rolling rocket. “It felt good,” Hurley said. “The car was real stable. I could have stopped on the last pass probably on brakes.”
Arrington believes few attempts have been made in 19 years since he helped Wicks, a West Coast driver known as “SpeedKing,” set the land speed mark in Utah.
“There’s so many different categories,” Arrington said. “You can change one thing and all of a sudden it moves you into a different class. It’s not anything people do as a sport week in, week out, but it is something that people do.”
Arrington expects the record to be certified by the International Hot Rod Association after officials receive data from the GPS tracking device that measured the speed.
The idea to make a run at the record originated from a conversation between Arrington and former Martinsville Mayor Danny Turner.
The pair pitched a proposal to Republican state Del. Terry Austin of Botetourt County, who is the chair of the VA250 Commission. The commission eventually contributed $50,000 to the project, which according to Turner had a $280,000 price tag. (Disclosure: The commission is one of our donors for our Cardinal 250 project, but donors have no say in news decisions. See our policy.)
Austin was on hand in Florida for Monday’s event along with former Chatham Mayor Will Pace, a member of the Virginia’s Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission.
Danville’s Peyton Sellers was the original choice to drive the car, with the attempt scheduled for early January. The run was postponed, and it was later announced that former NASCAR Cup star Kyle Petty would be behind the wheel.
However, that deal never materialized so Arrington chose Hurley, a 1994 Magna Vista High School graduate who works as a mechanic at his father’s Ridgeway business, Hurley’s Auto Sales.
Putting the “Martinsville Missile” into the record was truly a Southside Virginia endeavor.
Arrington, 69, is a 1974 graduate of the old Laurel Park High School. Turner graduated from Martinsville High in 1974, twice organizing school events that earned inclusion into the “Guinness Book of World Records.”
Turner was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer one year ago when the project began to move from an idea to reality in Arrington’s Martinsville shop, which is located in a former Sears store behind Liberty Fair Mall.
Fifty-two years is a long time between records.
“Back in the time when we were kids you’d always say, ‘What’s the next thing we’re going to break?’ And you had the world in front of you,” Turner said. “With the cancer diagnosis right when we started working on this, it was really a goal that I wanted to achieve, too. When you’re talking about how long you’ve got to live, let’s go ahead and do this while I’m still around.”
Arrington, Hurley and Turner were driving back to Virginia together Monday night.
Hurley planned to be at work Tuesday in his father’s shop after a long trip home.
Arrington is already a contemplating a return to Florida for another record attempt.
Meanwhile, the VA250 car that Arrington transported to Florida in a Virginia-themed hauler was enjoying its own celebrity. It was scheduled to appear at a boat race on the other side of the Sunshine State in St. Petersburg.
“It’s going to go show itself off,” Arrington said.