Gordon White, 90, of Deltaville, drove his racing car to a 134.261 mile-per-hour speed record — for a vintage midget car — with the Loring Timing Association on July 19.
The association runs land speed trials on the two-and-a-half-mile runway of the former Loring Air Force Base near Limestone and Caribou in Aroostook County in northeastern Maine. White was driving his “midget” or mini-sprint race car carrying a 110-cubic inch Offenhauser engine.
He was accompanied by Bill Watts of Sandy Hook, Conn., and Mike Katzmark, of Bethany, Conn. Both Watts and Katzmark had been with White in 1989 at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, where, with the same car, using a larger (122.047-cubic inch) engine, he set an international (Federation Internationale Automobile) unsupercharged, record of 153.198 mph. In 1987 he set a U.S. midget record at Bonneville of 156.902 mph.
White’s car was built in 1948 in Los Angeles by Frank Kurtis. It won 32 professional races between 1948 and 1961 and was at one time the championship car of the New England Midget Racing Association. White bought it, in parts, in 1968 and restored it as a show car, winning the Grand National First Place award of the Antique Automobile Club of America in 1986. He has subsequently driven it in vintage racing events in the northeastern U.S., winning the Labor Day race at Lime Rock Park, Connecticut, in 1997.
A retired Washington newspaperman, White was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. In Washington he wrote for the Chicago American and several western newspapers. He has written seven books on the history of American automobile racing.
A wide variety of cars and motorcycles were timed at Loring, including a 1923 Model T Ford which went 57. 908 miles per hour, and an electric Tesla which exceeded 203 mph.
