Something magical happens in mid to late August every year, conditions permitting. People travel from all over the world and come to Utah in the name of tuning and going as fast as wheels can carry you. This event is held by the Southern California Timing Association and is called Speed Week. I have lived here in Utah in close proximity to this Mecca of automotive culture, but have always had a reason not to go until this year. After having visited Bonneville Speedway this year, I want to share a few things that I observed and hopefully encourage a few more people to check out the Salt Flats next year.
Be Prepared For Heat
I was able to attend Speed Week on the first day, August 12, 2017, so there was nobody setting records, just a lot of qualifying runs. The Salt is a strange place to be, and in mid-August, the temperature is toasty. The sun was beating down at somewhere around 100F, and there was almost no shade to be found. There are no permanent structures out on the salt, since everything must be removed when the event is over to preserve the salt, so the only shade you will have is what you bring with you. There also isn’t a whole lot in the way of accommodations out there, so bring plenty of water and sun screen. You will likely have to apply more sun screen than usual since you are getting double the sun from above and below as it reflects almost entirely off the salt. This actually causes an interesting affect where the salt itself actually isn’t hot at all. If you have ever walked out onto a hot beach, you are accustomed with how scorching the sand can be, but salt isn’t sand, and it reflects the heat quite efficiently.
Bring More Wradios
The scale of the Speedway is like nothing I have ever experienced and it can be hard to keep track of what is going on. Fortunately a lot of information is broadcast over FM radio, so you will likely want to bring a portable radio, so that you can hear what is going on as you are moving around and watching cars try to go ridiculously fast. The FM radio announcers do a pretty good job at announcing drivers at the different tracks as they are pulling up to start, so if you are somewhere out of sight of the starting line, then you can know what to expect. If you want to know more specific information about how fast the cars are going, then you will want to bring a CB radio. My friend and I found ourselves near the starting line craning to see the cars disappear over the horizon and then trying to huddle close to the nearest person with a CB radio so we could hear the reported speed at different mile markers. My friend had a portable Amateur Radio, but, we wished we had had a CB. The video below is one I took from the starting line. It gives you a good taste of what spectating is like. Towards the end you can hear the CB radio chatter as they talk about the speed at different distances.
It’s More Than Just Time Trials
It is one thing to park yourself somewhere along the race track and watch fast cars go by, but there is so much more that you can experience. For one, the pit area is open to walk around. Be warned, though, that it is expansive. It was in the pit area that I found a booth for Indian Motorcycles and was able to take the picture of the Burt Munro Special that you see at the top of this article. This year was the 50th anniversary of the last record Burt Munro set. If you don’t know his story, then I highly recommend watching the movie World’s Fastest Indian. Walking around the pits was very educational, because of the unfettered access you had to the drivers and builders of all of the cars participating at Speed Week. The wide scope of vehicles you can see there is amazing, and if you see something you like, there is a good chance that you will be able to pick up a sticker or t-shirt while being able to chat with the driver about the amazing experience of driving fast out on the salt. The car you see below runs an old 4 cylinder Ford engine and the driver told me that he holds records in several different classes, because he will change the configuration of the car by bolting on new parts and trying to go again. He happened to have one car already in impound that morning after making a qualifying run.
The Fun Starts When the Racing Ends
You can’t have a gathering of thousands of disciples of speed without having some fun, and the nearby city of Wendover is only happy to oblige. On the day that I was there, the Golden Nugget Casino hosted a classic car show. There were cars there that had run speed attempts, and there were other cars there that people just brought out to show off. My favorite was pictured below with an old GMC straight six sporting a welded gun barrel as a fuel rail and faucet hardware to hold the valve cover on and serve as door latches.
Most of the cars being shown had been out to the salt several times before and sported stickers proudly from all of the years that they had attended. Many of the cars wore as much salt as they could get crusted on to the vehicle as a badge of honor. I’m sure some of you would cringe at the damage that all of that caked on salt would do to even painted surfaces, but it’s a different world out there on the salt, and people enjoy it.
Every evening they hold a different event so that the people who have travelled from all over the world can get together in good spirited fun, from car shows, to outdoor movie screening, to drinks at the local casinos. It really is a good time on and off the salt.
Saving the Salt
If you go to speed week, you will likely see stickers and placards pleading for people to save the salt. The Save The Salt organization even sets up complimentary water tanks with sprayers before you get off the salt so that you can spray your car down and try to get as much salt as possible off so that the salt stays put. There goal is to make sure that people can keep coming back every year, because if the salt disappears, then there will be no more speed week.
Other than saving the salt environmentally, I noticed something else out there that worried me about the legacy of a tradition going back more than 100 years to the first speed runs in 1912. As a 30-something I felt like a bit of an interloper, because the average age of a lot of the people out there was likely over 50. There are a lot of inspiring stories of people who have conquered great odds in the pursuit of speed. The way I see it, if you want to experience this amazing event, you had better do it, because if the people holding the event get too old, or the salt deteriorates too much (the cause is unknown), then we may not have any more speed week on the salt flats, and that would truly be a shame. If you want to go this year, the SCTA will be holding the World Finals from October 3rd thru 6th this year (2017), so get out and enjoy the salt fever while you still can.