Check out this beginner's guide to outright land speed records and one of the places they're synonymous with: Utah's famed Bonneville Salt Flats.
Written by Chris Parkin
5 min readPublished on
7 minBonneville Speed WeekMeeting the drivers racing across the salt flats at Bonneville Speed Week. Featuring: Stacie B London, Ali and JD Youngblood, Mixed Nuts Racing, John Stoner, Jim Mosher and Mitsuhiro Kiyonaga
Watch
Scoring a land speed record is the holy grail among speed freaks the world over. But to have even a slim chance of breaking the supersonic barrier, like Andy Green did back in 1997, you need financial backing, scientific expertise and nerves of steel.
Once you've got all of those nailed, though, it's off to either the Black Rock Desert in Nevada or the legendary Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. Watch the video above, then read on for everything you need to know about those glistening white flats and the history that's been made on them.
It's not who, but where. The Bonneville Salt Flats are in Utah, USA, near the border with Nevada, and as the name suggests it's a very big and very flat area of land. Speed freaks began using the terrain for racing way back in 1912.
Since 1935, Bonneville's been one of the the primary venues for land speed record attempts, with most land speed records recorded between 1935 and 1970 set there. Before 1935, most record attempts took place on beaches.
Take a first-person look at Bonneville:
2 minBonneville Speed Week: Youngblood POVMeeting the drivers racing across the salt flats at Bonneville Speed Week.
Its long, thick stretches of salt-encrusted earth are perfect for driving at high speed. The area was formed during the last Ice Age, when a huge lake dried up, leaving behind mineral deposits. Every summer the flats' salt crust hardens again after the winter rains, leaving a perfect speedway.
Torrential rain and cooler temperatures have led to the cancellation of events there in recent years, and the US Geological Survey estimates that the crust has thinned by nearly half a metre.
The first outright land speed record at Bonneville was scored by Malcolm Campbell and his famous Bluebird in 1935. They notched the first-ever 480kph (300mph) pass. After 104 years of racing and record-breaking there, the place will forever be a motorsport utopia.
The UK's Andy Green and his ferociously fast Thrust SSC. In 1997, he zipped across the earth in a twin turbofan jet-powered car at 1,227.986kph to notch the first ever supersonic land speed record.
This didn't take place at the Bonneville Salt Flats however, but at Nevada's Black Rock Desert instead. In fact, the last three outright land speed world records were set at Black Rock.
The last outright record to be set at Bonneville Salt Flats was on October 23, 1970, when Gary Gabelich's rocket-powered Blue Flame peaked at 1,014.656kph, making him the first to exceed 1,000kph.
There are a bewildering number of bodies and different records, but, in terms of the outright land speed record, the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile) or affiliated local clubs, measure the average speeds on a fixed-length course – a one mile flying start – over two runs (or passes) made in opposite directions within one hour of another.
What kind of vehicles can claim the outright land speed record?
Quite a few, actually. But not motorcycles.
Craig Breedlove and his jet-powered Spirit Of America 'car' changed everything at Bonneville in 1963, when he recorded a new outright land speed record… on three wheels.
To begin with, the FIA refused to recognise this as a new official record, but eventually they changed their minds and, in conjunction with other governing bodies, introduced new categories, including one for the previously dominant and still standard wheel-driven car, as well as an outright land speed record.
Since then, with record breakers developing new weird and wonderful looking machines with as much aerodynamism as possible, no wheel-driven car has held the absolute record.
There are now four main categories (and countless other sub-categories) represented in land speed record attempts, with Category C (jet-thrust propulsion) dominating the absolute world record.
Bonneville Salt Flats hasn't seen any absolute land speed records set for a while now, but in August 2018, Danny Thompson scored a new record for wheel-driven cars in a refurbished version of the 50-year-old Challenger 2,the car in which his dad, Mickey, made a record-breaking attempt in 1968 in the same location. The new fastest speed for a wheel-driven, piston-powered car now stands at a not inconsiderable 722.1kph.
Thompson recorded his major feat during Speed Week, which has been descending on the Flats every year since 1949. As well as being a gathering of cars of all shapes, sizes and speeds, it also sees motorcycle speed records broken on a fairly regular basis.
Fans of the TV series Mad Men will also recognise the Bonneville Salt Flats from the show's series finale, when Don Draper races a 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle at Bonneville Speedway.
Essential viewing for speed freaks who want to know more about the Flats are the the films The Donald Campbell Story and The World's Fastest Indian.
Take a run at the Bonneville Salt Flats with Mixed Nuts Racing:
2 minBonneville Speed Week: Mixed Nuts POVMeeting the drivers racing across the salt flats at Bonneville Speed Week.
Watch
Be sure to download the free Red Bull TV app and catch the motorsports action on all your devices! Get the app here
Formula Racing
Motoring
Shop the Collection
Go to Shop
Most popular stories
This website uses technically necessary cookies.
With your consent, this website shall use additional cookies (including third party cookies) or similar technologies to make our site work, for marketing purposes and to improve your online experience.
You can revoke your consent via the Cookie Settings in the footer of the website at any time. Further information can be found in our Privacy Policy and in the Cookie Settings directly below.
Privacy Preference Center
When you visit any website, it may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. This information might be about you, your preferences or your device and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to. The information does not usually directly identify you, but it can give you a more personalized web experience. Because we respect your right to privacy, you can choose not to allow some types of cookies. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings. However, blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer.
More information
Manage Consent Preferences
Strictly Necessary
Always Active
These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not then work. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable information.
Performance
These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies we will not know when you have visited our site, and will not be able to monitor its performance.
Third Party Content Cookies
These cookies may be set through our site by third-party providers of third-party content that is embedded on our site. They may be used by those companies to load, display, or in other ways to enable you to use that content. As this third-party content is provided by autonomous companies on their own responsibility, those companies may also use these cookies for their own additional purposes, such as marketing. Please refer to the privacy policies of those companies for that information. If you do not allow these cookies, you will not be able to use this third-party content embedded on our site, such as videos, music, or maps.