Bonneville Saltflats Racing

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The LandSpeed Record races are raced on the saltflats close to Wendover which is about 2 hours west of Salt Lake City in Utah. The layout of the racing complex can be seen on this picture. The blue areas are the 'important' parts which will be described below.

The entrance to the SaltFlats

When you leave the main road between Salt Lake City and Wendover to go to the race tracks you first enter a normal tarmac road. At the Wendover side there is initially even some green stuff on the sides of the road!
Soon this is replaced by salt pools.
Then the tarmac road ends and you arrive at the beginning of the saltflats.
Here are a number of people ready to wash the salt of any vehicle coming from the saltflats as any car or motorcycle is covered with it. This is also where the official landmark sign is located.

When you leave the tarmac for the first time you do not realize it is salt you're stepping on!Everybody I saw doing that stepped onto the salt surface as if they step on ice, carefull not to slip and fall since it looks 100% like snow and ice. Only after some time do you get used to the fact that it is not slipery at all! There's just an awful lot of it and it is extremely white and sun-reflecting!

The Technical Innspection

Every vehicle has to go through the technical inspection before it is allowed to go out on the race tracks.
The inspection has two main goals:

  • Check if the vehicle fits in the class in which the crew wants it to run.
  • Check if the vehicle complies with all security features.

For example, if you want to participate in a production class your vehicle has to be in exactly the same state as when it left the factory. In order to 'prove' this you have to provide paperwork like original manufacturers specifications, sales brochures and factury manuals. There are also a large number of security measures, each depending on the class you want to run in.
Here they check if the vehicle fits in the class the crew wants to participate in, check general technical condition and see if it meets all safety requirements.
As you can understand this is hard work, specially on the first day when everybody is anxious to get going. If you come back later in the week the pace has slowed down a bit :-)

The pits

The pits are formed by a large square area where only the pilots and pitcrews are allowed to go. In here there is a constant flow of vehicles coming and going. Vehicles participating in the races are not allowed to use their own engine unless during the actual race. Around here they have to be pushed or pulled by a supporting vehicle. They do test the engines here though which accounts for tremendous noise levels every now and then. For the rest most you see is tents to keep vehicles and people out of the blinding sun.

In the tents you can see a large variety of old carpets, plastic sheet, wooden floorboards, etc to keep people, tools and vehicles out of the salt.

Looking around the pits you see an enormous array of weird and wonderful vehicles plus associated activities. When was the last time you saw people folding up the parachute of their truck?

Talking about trucks, the biggest racing vehicle in Bonneville must be this truck. Tremendously loud and fast!

Most members of our team in front of our pits:

Setting a record

If a vehicle has made a run which is good for a new record the team has got two choices:

  • Accept their own record. This means the vehicle will have to go into the impound area to be checked. These checks are done to make sure the vehicle complies to the rules for it's class. This is also the time for the compentition to protest against the record, for example because the vehicle would not fit in that class. The time spent in impound is 24 hours but normally until the next morning when the run has to be repeated to see if the vehicle is truly up to it or if it was simply a 'lucky shot'.
  • Deny the record, for example when the crew thinks they can do even better. This means that the record is not recorded as such though.

    • During the time in impound the crew has two hours to work on the vehicle to make it ready for the repeat run the next day.

    The impound area normally does not look very exciting:

    The only slightly interesting feature is this truck and it's load. The large contraption with the barrels is simply a very heavy weight which get's towed over the race tracks every now and then to smoothen out the salt even more.

    Fuelling up

    The two main categories in which any vehicle falls are 'Fuel' or 'Gas'. Under that there are many categories but this is a very large distinction applicable to everybody. If you want to participate with a normal petrol driven vehicle you have to buy your petrol from this stand and you have to arrive there with an empty tank. This to make sure that the petrol in your vehicle is really petrol and nothing else. If you do not use the petrol from the organization you automatically fall into the 'fuel' category in which everything is allowed like alcohol, kerosine, diesel or anything else which burns. The petrol people are sitting along the entry road and have wisely put up large sunscreens!

    You pull or push the vehicle towards the station and they fill it up for you.

    Then the tanks get's sealed so you cannot add anything to it.

    The visitors area

    When travelling from the pits to the starting line you pass the petrol station and the visitors area. Then you arrive at the point where visitors cannot go beyond. Here is also the division made between those running on the short track and those running on the long track.


    where a number of brave souls sit all day in the blistering heat making sure that only pilots and pitcrew pass

    Once you have arrived in the appropriate queue the wait starts.

    At the starting line

    This is the place where the most action can be seen. After having lined up this is where the riders can finally let go and use some of the adrenaline they built up. This is also the place where the starter (the man in white with the headpones) is in total control. He is in contact with the timing trailer and nobody rides without him telling them to. First he checks if the vehicle is race-worthy. There are a number of things which have to be in order like if the helmet is worn in the right way and if the dead-mans-cord is connected between the wrist of the pilot and the vehicle.

    If all that is in place the pilot can get the go ahead

    If you look carefully at the bottom-right page you can see the truck behind the racing vehicle. This truck is used to push the first bit since the racer doesn't have a starting engine.

    Being at the starting line is the most exciting bit since you can take good close-up looks at the weirdest vehicles you can imagine. However, the heat is everywhere and it doesn't take long before you find some shade again!

    Queueing up

    Once arrived in the appropriate queue the waiting starts. This can take a long time, specially during the first few days as there are a lot of participants.

    The heat is very intense and some weird people even try to make coffee by putting some instant coffee in a plastic bottle, add water and leave it out in the sun for a while
    (in all honesty: he even drank it!).

    It is no fun though for the motorcycle riders who sit there, all dressed up in (often black) leather so members of the pit crew keep up umbrellas to make sure the pilot does not literally overheat.


    Since cold fuel creates better racing results you see all sorts of tricks to keep the fuel cool, ranging from simple umbrellas to bag of icecubes on top of the tank.

    Sometimes even combined approaches are used, in this case ice cubes on the tank, an umbrella over that and shadow provided by a camper

    Human being will not voluntarily stay in this kind of sun for very long. Whenever there was nothing to do for a moment people will try and get out of the sun and the occasional camper is a welcome shadow bringer!

    One of the most loved people on the saltflats is the proprietor of this stall:

    The end of the long track

    No pictures here as I never got to this point. It is the exit for the vehicles on the long track i.e. the vehicles doing over 200 Mph.

    The end of the short track

    This is the end of the short (5 miles) track. Out here you can imagine that you are in the middle of nowhere with just salt, salt, salt and more salt around you. If you look across the tracks you can vaguely see the pits in the far distance,
    but if you look the other way you look at mile after mile of salt.

    If a vehicle made a succesfull run this is where they can stop and turn around. As from here they are no longer allowed to move with the aid of their own engine, they have to be either pushed or pulled back.

    The emergency area

    There are no specific pictures of the emergency area as they would only contain salt anyway. The emergency area is kept clear off everything including vehicles, people and everything else. If a pilot has an urgent kind of problem all he needs to do is go into the emergency area and everybody will realize something bad is going on. In that case emergency services will directly be notified to help.

    Note that is not to be used for anything else!

    Teh timing area

    The timing trailer is the place where (how appropriate) the races are timed. It sits in the middle of the two tracks where they have a good view over the emergency area and they have their own radio station which constantly broadcasts the latest results from the races.
    On the first day before the actual races start this is where everybody gathers to attend the opening of the event andwhere the rules are explained to everybody.

    After a succesfull run the pilot first gets an unofficial time slip at the turnout

    and later an official slip can be obtained from the timing people.