Atlantic City Speedway in New Jersey proved ephemeral. Built using 4.5 million feet of timber, on the site of the dismantled Amatol munitions factory, it arrived with a bang in 1926, but began its gradual return to nature just two years later.

Frank Stallworth Lockhart was also ephemeral. He arrived with a bang – winning the Indianapolis 500 as a 23-year-old rookie in 1926 – and in less than two years would establish himself as an all-American hero. (Charles Lindbergh ‘had’ to fly solo across the Atlantic to upstage him.)

Although born in Dayton, Ohio, Lockhart was a West Coaster. The ‘Boy Wonder’ of LA’s burgeoning dirt track scene dove deeply on shallower lines, overtaking as he did so, before releasing the brakes (fronts only on his spartan Model T-based Fronty-Ford) and the rare speed – think Nuvolari, Clark, Schumacher – contained therein. More experienced rivals aboard superior machines cursed his impetuosity, marvelled at his virtuosity.

“Having qualified at an unheard-of 92.45mph, he set 10 distance records on Cleveland’s dirt”

The creator of those superior machines wisely decided to draw this pesky kid closer from the second half of 1925. Harry Arminius Miller would get more than he bargained for. The wins flowed, as he had hoped, but this relentless young charger drove him crazier than ever. The auto-mechanic with a shock of wavy hair had had no formal engineering training – from humble beginnings, Lockhart was rumoured illiterate. But rather than bask in the brilliance of Miller and his lieutenants, Leo Goossen and Fred Offenhauser, he quietly – Lockhart neither boozed, nor smoked, nor cussed – busied himself improving the unimprovable. That his car, which he was being paid to build – and which carried his preferred No27 race number – went faster for longer as a result of his unauthorised changes failed to entirely assuage his employer. His handy covering of several bases, however, saw him placed on the team’s Indy roster – Lockhart’s first trip across the Mississippi – primarily to act as relief driver to Bennett ‘Nemo’ Hill.

Nobody knew what to expect of Lockhart. He had proved his adaptability by winning his only road race to date – in elbows-out Jack Brabham fashion on a five-mile gravel course snaking through the hills above the Ascot Park half-mile dirt oval – but had crashed on his only visit to a board track, underestimating the speed required to mount its bankings.

“Lockhart again finished runner-up in the standings, this time to Pete DePaolo”

Indy’s bricks, however, held no terrors for him. Immediately quicker than Hill, and substantially so, the clamour for his inclusion when another Miller racing car became available two days before qualifying could not be ignored: “Give it the kid,” croaked a shivering, flu-ridden Pete Kreis from his hospital bed.

Lockhart’s first officially timed lap was a huge new record – 115.488mph – but his second saw him limp in on a shredded right-rear. His second, and more restrained, attempt was halted by a broken valve that damaged the block. Facing a knockout third strike, and bedding-in the rebuilt engine, he dawdled for the seventh row.

Sure enough, he whipped through the field to run second after just 16 laps. But this was a marathon, not a sprint. Could Lockhart, who had only once gone beyond 100 miles – that road race win – be able to pace his effort? He stalked team-mate Dave Lewis, in Miller’s supposedly faster – and 50% more expensive – front-wheel-drive version, before taking the lead on lap 60. He appeared to the manor born. Not even an hour’s interruption – a first for the event – fazed him, and he was almost three laps to the good, and averaging 95.904mph (better than his qualifying speed) when the rain’s return caused the result to be called after 400 miles. His $35,600 purse would allow him to cut the strings.

The beneficial effect of independence was prompt: breakthrough wins on the boards of Charlotte in August were followed by his pocketing the season’s second biggest prize ($10,000) at Altoona in Pennsylvania. The national championship eluded him – he had missed too many rounds to be able to challenge the consistent Harry Hartz – but his was assuredly the buzz. The mandarins of the American Automobile Association Contest Board had tried to take him down a peg by insisting that he contest the lesser event of an unanticipated double-booking in July. But Lockhart swallowed his undeserved medicine, won on the dirt of Abilene, and pressed on, undaunted.

His winter was spent on myriad improvements, working in conjunction with like-minded, Ohio-born but LA-raised contemporaries: Zenas Weisel was a graduate of Berkeley; and younger brother John was studying at Caltech. Counterpoint to their youthful, brainstorming exuberance was hard-nosed Ernie Olson, riding mechanic to the late Jimmy Murphy, winner of the 1921 Grand Prix de l’ACF for Duesenberg and proclaimed as the ‘King of the Boards’. Lockhart was their undisputed leader. According to The Autocar, “He never claimed that these ideas were either revolutionary or necessarily right, but simply that they were the logical sequence of such experience as he had gained.”

Foremost among them was an air intercooler that usefully lowered the mixture’s temperature after its compression by the rear-mounted centrifugal supercharger. Other mods included: a downdraught carburettor with an air-scoop; increased impeller rpm; and heat-treated valves. This 1.5-litre twin-cam straight-eight had generated 154bhp at 7000rpm in standard form. Rear radius rods, a locked differential and beefier driveshafts and UJs were now needed to cope with its newfound 230bhp at 8000.

Frank Lockhart’s 144.2mph pole position around the 35-degree bankings of 1.25-mile Culver City in March was a step change. His 171.021mph arcing approach and pass through the flying mile at Muroc Dry Lake – today part of Edwards Air Force Base – in April was a giant leap. A tiny track car – the addition of wheel discs its only concession to reducing drag – had entered the realm of the aero-engined monsters: Henry Segrave’s twin-engined 44.8-litre Sunbeam had cracked 200mph only a fortnight before. Lockhart’s whirring mind now roared. He had his new quest.

There were still races to be run and won in the meantime. His 147.3mph pole around the 45-degree bankings at 1.5-mile Atlantic City – completed in that hunched, urgent style reminiscent of Nuvolari’s – would not be beaten until Jim Hurtubise’s 4.2-litre Indy roadster flirted with 150mph in 1960. And Lockhart’s leading of the opening 81 laps of the Indy 500 – from its first 120mph pole – would not be beaten until Emerson Fittipaldi led the first 92 of 1990.

Reliability was harder to come by: a broken oil line at Atlantic City; a conrod at Indy, having led 110 of 120 laps: “Where’s the nearest hot-dog stand? I’m hungry”; a supercharger at Altoona; and another conrod on Detroit’s dirt. Lockhart was by now running a two-car team, ambition which paid dividends with consecutive 1-2s in August, at Kalamazoo in Michigan and Toledo. A corner had been turned.

Successive wins at Syracuse in New York, Altoona and Charlotte followed. On September 25, having qualified at an unheard-of 92.45mph, he set 10 distance records in winning the 100-miler on Cleveland’s dirt; and he did so in his secondary Miller, to prove that it was as potent as his Indy winner. Two victories on the boards of New Hampshire track Salem in October topped off a season in which he again finished runner-up in the standings, this time to Pete DePaolo. Lockhart was clearly the faster – six poles to Pete’s none – and surely his moment would come. Alas, time and tide were against him.

He would never race again.

Though his Land Speed Record bid was announced in July, its finance had been finalised sometime before that, in the spring: Stutz president Fred Moskovics, who thought the world of Lockhart, stumped up $35,000 of the estimated $80,000-$100,000 cost – a syndicate of millionaire sportsmen covered the shortfall – and also offered the use of his company’s facilities in Indianapolis. The Weisels joined – on $40 per week for a minimum of four months – the day after John’s graduation.

Others involved included: Jean Marcenac, the Frenchman brought over to oversee Ralph DePalma’s Ballot at the Indianapolis 500 in 1920, and who then decided to stay; Jimmy Lee, Lockhart’s Indy-winning crew chief; fabricators Myron Stevens, another LA contemporary, and Floyd Dreyer, the motorcycle legend who had assisted Marcenac in George Souders’ recent Indy victory.

A dozen draughtsmen and six mechanics, working in secrecy and a spotless environment for three months, and under Lockhart’s inspiring command, combined to create the startling Stutz Black Hawk Special, pristine in white, where it wasn’t plated or polished. Wrapped around its driver’s 5ft 3in/135lb frame, its body measured 24in at its widest, and 46in at the tip of its headrest, within an extended 9ft 4in wheelbase and a standard Miller 4ft 4in track. It scaled just 2800lb. The rival White Triplex, somewhat ugly and drab in seaweed green, tipped 8000lb.

“Just missing officials, the final flip flung Lockhart beyond the hissing wreckage”

This blundertruck featured three engines combining for 81 litres. Lockhart’s rapier was powered by a 3-litre comprising a pair of supercharged/intercooled Miller ‘eights’ at a 30-degree included angle on a common crankcase, spurred together, and driving through a three-speed gearbox. Its 385bhp at 7000rpm was theoretically sufficient for 263mph, given the low frontal area and ground-hugging – underslung rear axle, worm-gear final drive – streamlined shape conceived in the wind tunnels of the Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Company, who also helped with the body’s construction, and the Army Air Service at Dayton: 54lb of lift, 458 of drag, at an ambitious 285mph.

The drag links of its cam-and-lever steering were the only mechanisms exposed to airflow; finned, curved intercoolers formed part of the bonnet; a radiator was obviated by 75lb of crushed ice; spats encased 30in x 5in tyres and Lockheed hydraulic brakes; 76 ball bearings reduced friction; and axles and steering arms were shrouded by fairings. Many, rival Malcolm Campbell among them, doubted that something apparently so fragile could hold its course at such speed. Lockhart, however, knew that no weight had been shaved at the expense of rigidity.

There was, though, an aspect beyond his control. The destruction of the rig and widespread damage caused by his firing a shotgun at a tyre rotating at 3000rpm had, according to a January Firestone report, proved that such an occurrence would be fatal. Firestone, with its well-established and successful competition department, was the obvious choice. It had designed covers with a doubled bead strength, and recommended 125lb/sq in and right-angled valve stems to avoid failure by distortion or penetration. Lockhart, however, went with financially straitened Dickinson Tires. We have to assume that money lay at the root of this decision.

The attempt was scheduled for February at Daytona’s Ormond Beach. Quick to congratulate Campbell on his 206.956mph in the 22.3-litre Blue Bird, Lockhart might have topped that the next day but for a clutch failure which denied him a return run after a faster upwind pass. He tried again two days later, in adverse conditions. Momentarily disoriented by a patch of mist, he drifted left into softer sand at 225mph, twitched right, and skimmed and tumbled 100yds into the ocean, fortunately landing upright. Spectators held Lockhart’s lolling head above breaking waves as the car was heaved ashore so that he might be released – using chisels, drills and blowtorches – from the bent chassis and mangled cockpit. The worst of the first injuries of Lockhart’s career were three severed tendons in his left wrist.

Man and machine were rated fit by April. This time Lockhart congratulated Philadelphia’s Ray Keech on his 207.552mph in the White Triplex, but his own car was hampered by a carburetion issue. The pressure on him was increasing. Three days later, on a surface rippled by a high tide, the engine suddenly chimed: 203.45mph, upwind. Lockhart, a young man in a hurry – for wasn’t Segrave working on a new challenger? – now felt sure of the record. C’mon! Let’s go! Those spats not only made changing tyres impossible within the time limit, but also prevented a visual check. Besides, Lockhart had penned a public letter praising their integrity in his February crash: “No tire would have served me better.”