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SPEEDtv.com Reviewed: “Bonneville: The Fastest Place on Earth”
Written by: Gregg Leary Charlotte, NC – 9/6/2006
Category:Auto Racing
To a true racing fan, a single word or two can speak volumes—Indianapolis, Le Mans, Daytona, Bonneville. The names alone evoke not only the place, but also the many events that have occurred there … the sights, sounds, smells, tastes … even the visceral vibration of the internal organs as the marvelous machines howl past.
“Landspeed” Louise Ann Noeth writes with such a reverence and respect for Bonneville that I almost expected her book to begin with Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning…” In a way, I guess it does!
Chapter 1:” From the Ice Age to the Train Age” gives a brief history of the formation of the famed Bonneville Salt Flats and tantalizing tidbits of history. Like America, Bonneville was named for someone who never set foot there, Captain Bonneville. He WAS a larger than life character. Thomas Paine may have been his father. Bonneville fled France during the French Revolution, was befriended by Lafayette, went to West Point, and served in the Mexican and Civil War … but he never visited his namesake.
One of the surprises about “The World’s Largest Racetrack” is its 4,214-foot elevation. I imagine it to be a tuner’s nightmare. It was once Lake Bonneville (actually an inland sea) 135 by 325 miles, the size of Lake Michigan and 1,000 feet deep. The salt was left behind when the water evaporated. The salt is hard as concrete. You can’t pound a nail into it, you must use a drill. It is always cool and moist to the touch so it cools the tires of the land-speed machines. Winter rains can bring 6,000 acres of standing water that doesn’t evaporate until early summer. That’s how the salt replenishes and “heals itself.”
When the doomed Donner party crossed the salt in 1846, taking the infamous “Hasting’s Cutoff,” they lost valuable time and many oxen and were forced to abandon many personal articles. The delay caused them to meet their grim fate in the High Sierras above Reno that winter. The “Enola Gay’s” B-29 flight crew that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima trained at nearby Wendover, Utah.
Sir Malcolm Campbell was the first to go 300 MPH on the salt, Sept. 3, 1935, something he was unable to do at Daytona. “The Utah salt flats are the speed laboratory of the future,” Campbell said. Sir Malcolm’s milestone put Bonneville on the land speed record map and Daytona had to find another form of racing … stock cars.
Andy Green, who broke the sound barrier at 763 mph at Black Rock, Nevada (300 miles due west of Wendover) said, “You can do great things with a race car anywhere in the world, but what you do at Bonneville makes a record special. I don’t want to be known as the only World Landspeed Record holder who hasn’t driven Bonneville.”
In September 1960, Mickey Thompson was the first American to go 400 mph in a one-way run (no World Record) aboard Challenger I. with 4 V-8 Pontiac engines. The driveshaft broke on the return run. Mickey used to walk the entire 12 miles of the course at night with his wife following in a car … the lights of the car and moonlight would illuminate imperfections in the salt.
In the movie, “The World’s Fastest Indian,” Anthony Hopkins, playing Burt Munro is asked if he’s afraid of being killed in a crash of his motorcycle. His reply…
“No…You live more in five minutes on a bike like this going flat out than some people live in a lifetime.” (His motorcycle is pictured on page 96.)
Louise Noeth waxes poetic in “Bonneville.” She writes of the landspeed racers as “a family bound together by speed-a powerful force that erases ethnic, economic, political, and religious barriers. They are time and distance groupies… speed freaks who will tell you speed is better than sex…it is just you, the machine and the Almighty.”
A Brief Bonneville Time Line distilled from the book.
1910: “Ab” Jenkins rides his motorcycle along the railroad ties across the Salt Flats.
1914: “Terrible Teddy” Tetzlaff drives the “Blitzen Benz” to an unofficial World’s Record of 142.8 MPH.
1932: “Ab” Jenkins does 2,710 miles in 24 hours…SOLO…on a 10 mile circular course.
1935: Sir Malcolm Campbell averages 300 MPH in “Bluebird”…the first time the salt was marked with a black line of oil.
1947: John Cobb breaks 400MPH one way with at 2-way average of 394MPH.
1948: Rollie Free sets World Motorcycle Record of 150MPH on Vincent Black Shadow…ripped a seam in his leathers and made the return run in his bathing suit.
1949: First Bonneville National Speed Trials.
8-5-63: Craig Breedlove’s “Spirit of America” averages 407 MPH. The FIM gave it “Top Motorcycle” honors…”motorcycle with sidecar.”
10-13-63: Breedlove goes 526 MPH.
In 1964 the FIA established a category called “International Records for Special Vehicles.” They recognized Art Arfons’ 536 MPH in the “Green Monster.”
11-12-65: Bob Summers’ “Goldenrod” goes 409 MPH as the fastest wheel- driven vehicle.
11-15-65: Breedlove goes over 600 MPH in Sonic I. (Breedlove was the first driver to average over 400, 500, and 600 MPH)
1967: Burt Munro sets SA1000 record at 183 MPH on his 1920 Indian Scout.
10-23-70: Gary Gabelich’s rocket powered “Blue Flame” runs 622 MPH.
8-21-91: Al Teague’s “Spirit of 76” goes 409.986….quickest by a wheel-driven vehicle.
2001 Don Vesco runs 458 MPH in “Turbinator”…sets record for wheel-driven turbine engine car at Bonneville.
A “Who’s Who” of those who have driven at Bonneville:
Art Arfons, Craig Breedlove, Sir Malcolm Campbell, Donald Campbell, A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti, Gary Gabelich, Don Garlits, Andy Granatelli, Phil Hill, Bobby Isaac, Paul Newman, Bobby Unser, Stirling Moss, “Ab” Jenkins, John Cobb, Paula Murphy, Mickey Thompson, Wilbur Shaw, Roy Rogers.
A Couple Footnotes to the Bonneville Saga:
1983: Richard Noble runs 633MPH in Thrust II. at Black Rock, Nevada. (Sir Malcolm Campbell left Daytona for Bonneville in 1935…His countryman left Bonneville for Black Rock 48 years later.)
10-15-97 Andy Green breaks sound barrier …763 MPH in Thrust II at Black Rock, Nevada.
“Bonneville: The Fastest Place on Earth” earns 4 out of 5 lug nuts for its 156 pages of fascinating, well-documented history of land speed racing and its dozens of beautiful photographs. Fascinating.
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