Land Speed Racing
Despite being wrongly associated with drag racing, setting speed records at the Bonneville Salt Flats is racing of a unique sort —no "0-60" records are broken here. Since the salt is somewhat slick, maintaining traction is a major concern of every racer. Cars start slower than many expect, but they make their way up to some very fast speeds. Given the great size of the flats, there is plenty of room for these race cars to reach their full potential. There are two to three tracks, depending on the condition of the salt, set up for each event. The shortest is usually a 5-mile course while the long-course usually runs 7 miles. Depending on the class (there are hundreds of classes that participate, from motorcycles to streamliners to cars practically driven off the lot), racers are assigned to courses accordingly. Some classes, like the 49cc motorcycles, have records set at under 100 mph while others, such as high-powered streamliners, reach speeds of 400-500+ mph.
Read more about this topic: Bonneville Salt Flats
Famous quotes containing the words land, speed and/or racing:
“Every time we get near the land you get that look on your face. When a man goes to sea, he ought to give up thinking about things on shore. Land don’t want him no more. I’ve had me share of things go wrong and all come from the land. Now I’m through with the land and the land’s through with me.”
—Dudley Nichols (1895–1960)
“It was undoubtedly the feeling of exile—that sensation of a void within which never left us, that irrational longing to hark back to the past or else to speed up the march of time, and those keen shafts of memory that stung like fire.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason they don’t get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goat’s cheese ... get up at dawn to run, break for a mid-morning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)