First of all, you gotta have a lot of guts…but we'll let Dr. Miller give you the blow-by-blow from a professional perspective.

"In preparation for a run, you check the nitrogen pressure in the air bottles. Then you put in just enough fuel for a quarter-mile run and for me an average run needed about 20-22 gallons of hydrogen peroxide in the fuel tank. Check the safety valves, then close the vent on the tank. You are pushed to the track just behind the starting line and aimed straight down the race track. Obviously, you can't be cranking the wheel all over in one of these cars, so you want the car straight as a string. Then you put about 50-lbs. PSI on the fuel tank, which allows you to preheat the silver screen catalyst in the rocket. I just tap the throttle a little and this gives off a little steam. Once the engine is cleaned from this pre-heating, you put about 700-pounds of pressure on top of the hydrogen peroxide fuel.

"As I sit in the car on the line, I always pushed my head back in the seat and fixed my eyes on a point in the horizon. Like it might be a tree at the end of the track or some object like that. I take a deep breath and then slam down on the throttle. Instantaneously, you're hit with about 12 to 13 Gs and go into severe tunnel vision-it's sort of like a gun scope. Naturally, you are getting pushed back in the seat all the way down the track. I actually make about 20-30 corrections in steering under those conditions. They are small in motion and that might not seem like much, but as fast as I'm going they have to be precise and done extremely quickly.

"After all, in a quarter of a second I'm going 60-mph, in .36 seconds I've gone a 100 feet. I made a run in Holland one time where I had gone 1.606 at 307-mph at the eighth mile point. You have no time to hesitate with these cars, it's gotta happen right now with the driver.

"I've heard it said that I've passed out after one of my three-second runs, but that's not so. My body does take a bit of beating. At times, I've gotten a bloody nose, bloody eyes, maybe an upset stomach, and all in all, I need about an hour to recuperate from the run."

Coming September 18: Part 2 The 3-second Run

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