Dave Bilwalk News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

How fast he can drive his legendary hydroplane, miss budweiser, and tries for the straightaway speed record. >> we'll be racing against time and mother nature. we'll see what we're made of. >> dave doesn't let his nerves show as he gets ready to start the record attempt. >> one of the problems in setting records is you know you're going to experience things that other people have not. >> everybody pay attention. the course is live. >> the speed is calculated by averaging the time over two one-kilometer runs. >> 9.83. >> the speed to beat is 198 miles per hour. dave it buckled into the cockpit ...

Celebration of success. everything about it is bigger and badder and more extensive than you could possibly imagine. >> dave says imagine driving your car at 200 miles an hour without springs or shocks. that's what it feels like to ride this thing. >> the environment of looking from the outside of a hydroplane, it likes wonderful, graceful vehicle that flying over the water. the truth is the boat is actually beating the snot out of the driver that's inside. >> david fell in love with racing boats as a teenager. while most kids his age were out riding bicycles. >> i started out racing flat-bott...

Goes wrong, disaster. >> in the blink of an eye, a piece of equipment fails or a driver makes a mistake, they could be 50 feet up in the air. >> at first glance, conservatively-dressed dave bilwalk might look more like a banker than a daredevil, but he's been racing hydroplanes for years and been in some pretty dramatic crashes. >> you're traveling at over a football field per second. so if you aren't anticipating what's going to happen, you're likely to crash. >> they flip through the air as if they weigh nothing, but these boats are 30 feet long, 7,000 pounds with 4,000 horsepower u

The water, exploding the protective canopy that dave is sitting under, ripping off his oxygen mask and submerging him in the water. >> i was unconscious under water. the safety team got there right away, got me onto the bottom of the boat. they cleared the airway and got the water out. >> amazingly, dave survives. his hand is crushed by the flying metal of the canopy. he ends up losing two fingers on his right hand. it's the type of crash that might deter another driver from racing altogether, but dave is no quitter. >> i just felt i had things to prove to myself and give to the sport. >> dave...

Good reason to be thankful for that safer capsule. in the summer of 2009, he enters thunder on the ohio, a race he's won ten times before. in his first heat another driver loses control and hits dave's boat. dave flips over and smashes into the water. but dave's work redesigning the driver's capsule pays off. it stays in one piece, and he waits in safety for help to arrive. >> the only injury i got was a finger injury, where it broke a knuckle in the finger. as boat accidents go, i'll take that. that's a good one. >> after decades of speeding, crashing and tumbling through the air, dave says d...