Lattin was delighted to share the news that recent dry winters in Utah, plus a change in mining practices, seem to have contributed to a much improved salt plain. Weather and mining have taken a toll on the flats, and a few years ago there were real concerns that racing at Bonneville might not continue. It cracks and heaves and makes an uneven track, hardly what you want when you're setting out in a rocket nosecone on a 400-mph run.

Too wet and it clumps and sticks to the tires, turning an attempt at a record into saline mud bogging.

These weren't record-setting conditions for the nearly 500 racers who made the trip this year, but Bonneville revels in unpredictability. Smoke filled the valley, filtering the clean desert light into the greasy orange of a chili-dog wrapper and hiding not just the horizon but even the cones a few feet out from the starting line in a smudge of ash. Not on the flats themselves-there's nothing there to burn-but nearby in the dry mountains. Even the slim orange flags that mark the boundaries of racetrack and pits bent to the ground in supplication. Winds lifted clouds of the soft gray silt that lines the outer banks of the salt flats and turned the entire lake bed into a giant, hazy, stinging blasting cabinet.

Near Wendover, Utah, its intimidating landscape can only be crossed by those with enough vision to imagine founding a city on the other side of a seemingly endless expanse of white salt-and land speed racers who can see a record nine miles away.īonneville Speed Week 2021, which kicked off last Saturday and ends Friday, began with more of a stumble than a triumphant stride.

The Bonneville Salt Flats is a place for the farsighted. Photo credit: Marc Gewertz and Speed Demon Media

Speed week bonneville salt flats