My Experience at the 2025 WHPSC
By Paul Pancella
Because my long-time employer (Western Michigan University) expects me to do certain things in exchange for payment, and because the World Human Powered Speed Challenge is held in early Fall, I usually can’t go. But I’ve lately gone to a reduced workload as I near retirement, and I was assigned no teaching duties this semester. So in the second week of September I was able to travel to Battle Mountain, Nevada, and spend more than a week as a volunteer on this singular event. It’s the first time I’ve been able to do this since 2008, the only other time I went. Much has changed in the intervening years, but the basic structure has not, and I still had some idea what to expect. Other local HPV folk have made this trek over the years (Mike Mowett, Garrie Hill, etc.) but this year it seemed I would be the only representative of the old MiHPVA to attend.
Sign at the Battle Mountain Civic Center. The local community is extremely supportive.
As many of you know, WHPSC is the primary venue for proving ultimate unassisted human speed on land. As such, it is a unique and monumental human endeavor, simple in concept but complex in practice. I was honored that Mike E. invited me to write this article, but I’m sorry it has taken me so long to do it. WHPSC has a rich history, with contributions from a lot of interesting people, many factors make it what it is, and there are many different ways to look at it. I had a hard time distilling my experience into a concise and readable form. But I promised Mike I’d try, so here goes.
I love this event for so many reasons. It fits right in with my deep curiosity about the world and also my appreciation for experimental science as a great way to learn things. There are many fundamental physical principles that bear on the question of just how fast a human being can go under their own power. Those theories and how they interact are all fascinating enough, but the question of how to reliably determine that speed in the real world, and the process of actually doing so, are equally interesting. Then if you are lucky enough to get there and see it happening, you are likely to share my strong initial reaction: that the whole business is rather strange.
The laws of nature and practical realities of modern society, along with particular decisions made by the sanctioning body, the International Human Powered Vehicle Association, combine to constrain what this event looks like. Some of the rules are obvious, some specifics are arbitrary. In contrast to the governance of bike racing, IHPVA minimized rules about what constitutes a vehicle, just enough to assure safety for participants without discouraging innovation. It was determined to certify the top speed record by timing over a 200-meter length, with a flying start from any distance. To limit the assistance from gravity, the whole course can have a maximum downhill slope of only 2/3 of a percent. And since aerodynamic effects are extremely important, wind speed in any direction during an official run cannot exceed 6.00 km/hour (10 second average). This latter is quite restrictive, at about 3.73 mph.
Nevada route 305, looking south toward the timing traps from the catch area
With relatively low available power, physics insists that a significant distance will be needed to accelerate up to a true maximum speed. The search for a long enough straight section of smooth hard pavement at high enough altitude to reduce air drag without hindering breathing is what landed us in the Nevada desert outside a small mining town 25 years ago. Just finding this site and organizing timed runs raised the HPV speed record from less than 70 mph to over 80 in the first 10 years. Now that the record is nearly 90 mph, it is clear that we are getting close to the ultimate limit, and future increases will be smaller, infrequent, and much more difficult.
History of the HPV speed record, courtesy of Mike Mowett
Here's how they do it: The course is a public road, but fortunately in a very sparsely populated area. Organizers have negotiated with the state Dept. of Transportation to close the relevant section of Nevada route 305 for multiple heats during a full week of racing. Heats occur in two sessions, morning and evening each day, Sunday through Saturday. The morning sessions, starting roughly at dawn, are longer, accommodating 5 heats in roughly 2.5 hours. Evening sessions are only about 90 minutes long with three heats, timed to occur during the calm wind period that generally occurs around sunset. For each heat, the road is closed for a maximum of 20 minutes, during which time multiple vehicles are allowed to run with carefully spaced starting times. A race director supported by a substantial team of volunteers works hard to manage the road closing periods in order to maximize the number of good runs. Qualifying runs with a shorter runup distance are clustered earlier in the week.
Every day, after the morning session, starting orders for the next two sessions are set based on rider preference with faster qualifiers getting priority choice
The procedures have evolved and been refined over many years, and most of the competing teams have a lot of prior experience at WHPSC, so the dance goes remarkably smoothly, considering all of the moving parts. A constant emphasis on safety has really paid off as well; there were no serious incidents to report this year.
I arrived in Battle Mountain on Friday night, with an eye toward helping with setup on Saturday Sept. 6, but no specific assignment. Flight to Salt Lake City and long rental car drive westbound on I-80 went fine. Some older fellows were shooting the breeze outside the hotel I was booked in when I pulled up; I was surprised to recognize a couple of them from 2008, and more surprised that Larry Lem recognized me and remembered my name!
On Saturday I found head timer Jun Nogami and assisted him in moving some stuff out to various parts of the course, including the main timing area. In 2008 I was Jun’s assistant when he first learned how to do the timing, and he’s been in charge of it ever since. A lot of the hard work, like placing the hay bales, had already been done, so it was pretty easy duty for me. The Civic Center was bustling with teams and vehicles, and I quickly met the couple that had taken charge of the whole event after longtime organizers Al and Alice Krauss handed it over last year.
At the big organizing meeting Saturday evening, I got the impression that there were barely enough volunteers to pull off the event, but that Jun had enough help at the timing station. I made it clear to the main organizers that I would happily serve wherever needed, and was assigned to help the race director in the “catch” area. This area, well past the finish line so vehicles have room to slow down, is about six miles from the start, but the main boss is based here and communicates by radio with all of the other crews.
I’m lucky (and old) enough to remember the early days of the IHPVA, when a plethora of vehicle configurations were designed, built, and campaigned in the quest for more speed than a diamond-frame bike could deliver. In the decades since, the laws of physics and biology have relentlessly winnowed the field and shown us what the fastest HPV must look like. It has two wheels inline, no more, no fewer, and one person aboard. That person is in a recumbent position, and applies power to one wheel via legs, pedals, cranks and chain. The vehicle is fully faired, of course, and barely larger than the person inside it. The outside surface of the body is extremely smooth, and the necessary openings for the wheels are tiny. A few fast vehicles still have windows for the driver to see through, but even that minor interruption of smooth airflow is now too much to tolerate. The fastest HPVs in the world are now “camera bikes”. The pilot can only view the outside world on an electronic viewscreen fed by a signal from a small video camera.
What’s inside the typical streamliner at this event. Many are front wheel drive, like this one, and none have more than a few degrees of steering. Teams must demonstrate the ability to extract an unconscious rider in a reasonable amount of time before being allowed on the course.
This is the fastest bike/rider combination this year, Francois Pervis in Altair 7, representing a French university team. Exceeded 88 mph on a wind-legal run late in the week. Photo courtesy of Arnold Ligtvoet.
To state the obvious, these 2-wheeled vehicles are dynamically stable but fall over below some minimum speed. Hence, they need assistance to get started, and must be caught by helpers at the end of their run if they wish to remain upright and preserve the smooth exterior of the vehicle. My main job during the week was to coordinate enough catchers for each run, freeing the race director to oversee the rest of the event. I was often also a catcher myself, a task for which I had no prior experience. We only muffed a couple of catches in the first session, with no serious damage, so that was good.
Russell Bridges in “Seventy-seven” being caught. Photo by Arnold Ligtvoet
Truth be told, not all of the participating vehicles needed to be caught. There were two arms-only competitors who ran fully-faired tricycles. And I was surprised but pleased to see three commercial velomobiles entered, only somewhat modified to maximize straight-line speed. But such vehicles do not contend for the ultimate speed record. I believe the fastest run in a velomobile this week was over 59 mph, in a Milan RS.
Velomobiles on display at the Civic Center
On Monday, they needed me to change jobs and I worked as a “chase official”. Every competitor is followed by a motor vehicle from start to catch, at a discrete distance. This is mainly to provide quick response if someone goes down during the long runup phase. Every chase vehicle needs a race official with a radio riding shotgun so that timing and the race director know right away if there is a mishap. I did a handful of chase runs during the two sessions that day, and did have the excitement of a racer leaving the course shortly after the start. But I returned to my main role as catch coordinator for the rest of the week.
We cancelled two of the seven evening sessions due to poor weather conditions. The first was Wednesday evening based on predicted steady winds that would have prevented any legal record runs. Then Thursday evening we all went out to the course on schedule, only to find a pretty impressive dust storm blowing in right before start time.
Thursday evening before the heats were officially called off
Despite the weird schedule (getting up before dawn every day, then being idle for most of the day before spending the dinner hour back out in the desert), I had a lot of fun. There were a few other activities. On Tuesday we had a catered lunch before a bunch of local school kids came to the Civic Center to see the vehicles on display and talk to the teams. One afternoon we had a very cool special screening of “The Fastest Bicycle” (https://iconictv.co.uk/thefastestbicycle/) a new British documentary about one team’s experience at WHPSC. And the awards dinner Saturday night was very enjoyable.
Steve “Slash” Slade signing autographs on the hood of Beano for adoring fans.
Going in, I thought there was a decent chance I could witness the HPV top speed record being broken, maybe see the first person exceed 90 mph. That didn’t happen, although the Frenchman Francois Pervis got close. As I mentioned, we are clearly now in an era when the ultimate record will be broken less often, by smaller increments, even if we manage to continue running the WHPSC. Battle Mountain is still an excellent venue for the purpose; it seems unlikely that we’ll be able to mount a similar effort at a superior site, since there isn’t much profit in the enterprise. But in order to get to the 90 mph milestone, a great many things have to go just right. This year we had relatively few periods when the wind was calm enough for record runs, and no reliable way to predict in advance when that would occur. The human rider has to be in top physical condition, and maximum performance generally requires a prep routine that takes some time. All the mechanical systems of the vehicle have to be operating at top efficiency, now including the electronic vision system so the rider can stay on the course with minimal extra effort. Our weather was also on the cool side, and we’re at the point where the small difference in air density due to temperature can be a make-or-break factor. So the weather needs to be both warm and nearly windless, at a time when the event has been scheduled and all the supporting volunteers are at the ready. The road surface being used has naturally deteriorated since it was last re-paved in 2009, which may also be slowing the vehicles down a bit.
Anyway, there’s a lot more that I could say, but not enough room here to say it. Buy me a drink sometime and I’ll gladly tell you more. All in all it was a great experience for me. I was able to make a modest contribution to what I consider a noble effort. The camaraderie of HPV geeks was great, like Waterford on steroids. And it was also cool to be involved in a real worldwide effort. We had teams from England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, and Australia, as well as the US. And it wasn’t like the usual competition where teams are trying to defeat the others, it was more like everyone together trying to beat the record, with tons of mutual support. As of now, there is no certainty that WHPSC will continue or how it might change, but I certainly hope it does continue, and that maybe I’ll get another chance to go and participate.
My workplace for most of the week, just off the road at the “catch” zone
Uncredited photos were taken by the author
Official website for WHPSC 2025: https://whpsc.org/
All results posted at https://jnyyz.wordpress.com/?s=WHPSC thanks to Jun Nogami
Also see more pics and video at “World Human Powered Speed Challenge” on Facebook
