Bonneville: The Birthplace of Speed

There is a certain allure in going as fast as you can in a straight line. Considered the simplest, purest form of motorsport, it’s the antithesis of high-tech categories, like Formula One. Sure, F1 has an appeal all its own; highly complicated and the top tier of racing for a reason, its teams spend hundreds of millions of pounds across myriad factors, including aerodynamics and engine development, but also in marketing and logistics. It’s incredibly complex and political, and out of reach for most.

This isn’t the case with Bonneville Speed Week. Located on a former lake which once covered the majority of Utah, the Bonneville Salt Flats have long been the home of straight-line speed. It remains an incredibly democratic form of motorsport, one with a simple objective that doesn’t require an in-depth understanding of rules and sector times. The one goal here is to go as fast as humanly possible, in a straight line. If you’ve got a vehicle that fits within the parameters of a respective class, and passes inspection, anyone can give it a go.

Getting to Bonneville isn’t particularly easy. Situated in a remote part of northern Utah just over the Nevada border, one of the nearest towns is West Wendover, NV, which boasts a few hotels and casinos that stop just short of Utah’s prohibitive gambling laws. I make the 4,800-mile pilgrimage from London, flying first to Los Angeles before making the 640-mile drive north, winding along the Mojave Desert and through Las Vegas over the course of ten hours. The further north I headed, the straighter the roads became, transforming into a dramatic moonscape, the dust turning to salt. Passing the bend on Bonneville Speedway Road, I knew I had finally arrived.

The salt in this part of the world is hallowed ground, providing the terrain for over a century of speed racing and earning it the moniker, “the birthplace of speed”. In 1914, Teddy Tetzlaff set an unofficial land speed record, reaching 142.85 mph in a 300 horsepower “Blitzen Benz”, a staggering feat for the time. Bonneville is still known as the world’s fastest speedway, and it’s easy to see why when you consider the size of it. The flats cover an area of 30,000 acres, around half the size of Edinburgh. Around twelve miles long and five miles wide, for one week in August, it becomes an automotive playground.

I arrive on the third morning of Speed Week. Nearly 300 entrants annually descend on the flats, all in the hope of beating land speed records. There are all sorts of vehicles present, from sleek, hand-built streamliners and their long, sculpted bodies, to highly modified road cars, impossibly loud trucks, and motorcycles. The aim isn’t quite to beat the out-and-out land speed record of 763.365 mph – held by Andy Green since 1997 – but rather to beat the records within a number of defined categories. The streamliners compete across several categories, including “blown fuel streamliners”, “unblown fuel streamliners”, “diesel streamliners”, and so on. There’s the “Vintage Class”, reserved for automobiles produced before 1948, including roadsters, sedans, coupes, and oval track racers across a number of sub-categories. Essentially, there’s a class of every vehicle you can imagine, from vintage hot rods to American sedans, modified GT cars, and even production cars. Motorcycles have their own classes, broken down into engine size.

Records for each of these classes are hotly contested. The pride of being the fastest, if only for a short period of time, is one of the reasons people return year after year. “To me, it’s quite pure,” says Phil Tolley, who helped his friend run in this year Vintage Class. “You go try your idea against the next guy. Your paycheck, your bank balance, it doesn’t matter here. You just try your idea and you might be better than the next guy. Bonneville gives the records, but she will give them to the next person as well.”

There are two main courses at Speed Week. Course 1 is for vehicles that exceed 175mph, whereas Course 2 is for anything under. Both are nine miles long, plenty of time for the fastest cars to exceed 500mph. 

Seeing a car attempt a record run on the salt is a singular experience. Standing at the three-mile marker, it looks as though it’s floating on the horizon, moving almost unnaturally on its trajectory. It glides forwards, appearing like a sped-up film, flying across the runway of salt like a projectile. The sound of the engine, deep and mechanical, sounds more like a plane or a weapon than a car. It looks as though it shouldn’t be possible.

The total number of records broken this year at Speed Week was 89, ranging from 43.776mph in a 50CC Honda motorcycle to 406.133mph in a Ferguson Racing streamliner, but the people, the landscape and the atmosphere were what lent Bonneville its immutable magic. This is an event in its 77th year, and aside from improvements in safety, changes have been minimal, and it is unspoiled by money or greed. For the spectators, volunteers, and those taking part, that can only be a good thing.

For more information on Bonneville Speed Week, click here.

Photography courtesy of Charlie Thomas.