At 14 miles long and seven miles wide, the Bonneville Salt Flats are 159 square miles of rock-hard salt deposits in a desolate region of northwestern Utah. They're a remnant of ancient Lake Bonneville, formed eons ago when the wild Colorado River jumped its banks during massive flooding, as the glaciers of the last ice age receded.
Many of us can remember the heydays of the salt flats and have fantasized about running there. I can remember as a four-year-old, having my dad read me stories about Craig Breedlove and Art Arfons' duels on the salt. I even had a model of Breedlove's Sprit of America jet racer.
Others aren't old enough to remember, but have read the stories and dreamed of the place. Chuck Johnson is one of these people and this is the story of his 2006 Bonneville run.
Every year, there are two meets where racers bring their cars to the salt. Most familiar to the casual enthusiast is the famous Speed Week, held yearly by the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA). This is where the big boys come out to play and vie for official world land speed records, and the SCTA is the traditional roll keeper for the coveted 200mph club.
The other is World of Speed, held by the Utah Salt Flats Racing Association (USFRA). The USFRA has two entry-level classes for beginning top-speed racers, the 130mph club and the 150mph club. The 130mph club allows people to run on the salt in a minimally prepared street car. The 150mph club requires additional safety equipment, such as harnesses and a roll bar. Although these speeds may not seem difficult, in the hot, thin air of Bonneville, the slippery and rolling-resistant salt causes cars to run significantly slower than most overzealous and inexperienced racers think they can.
Racing on the salt is not as easy as a casual observer might suppose. The surface can be rough and slippery, and unpredictable gusts of wind can sweep the course. Crashes and high-speed spinouts are not unheard of. Running on salt isn't simply going in a straight line-it requires skill and big huevos. This is real racing on a real course, timed by a real clock. Unlike the illegal midnight banzai run on public highways that most of us have probably experienced, bench racing and rice lies have no credibility here-the speed you obtain tells your unembellished story to everyone.
Being a seasoned road racer with NASA and no stranger to the law of Mr. Murphy, Johnson wisely started preparation on his car early, which is now probably the world's fastest B12-chassis Sentra. As always in racing, despite working until the wee hours on work days, delays in parts arrivals kept the car from being completed right up to the early morning before Johnson and his girlfriend, Annie Sam, were scheduled to leave for Utah.
One of the major concerns was if the early-'80s body of the B12 would remain stable at speeds far beyond what Nissan engineers envisioned. Weird things happen to cars at speed on the salt, even biting experienced professionals like the folks at Racing Beat and GM Motorsports, whose entries had suffered from the dangerous blow-over phenomena, where air pressure suddenly flips the car onto its roof.
Salt is also slippery. Usually there's a hard crust with loose particles of salt sitting on top. Some old-timers have likened driving on the salt at speed to driving on snow. Johnson was concerned about this, having heard stories of inexperienced racers suffering long spins due to bad aerodynamics and poor grip.
To remedy the problems of a car designed before much attention was paid to aerodynamics, a front splitter and belly pan were planned and some sort of rear spoiler was on the cards, but there was only time to fit a basic front airdam and a stock rear spoiler before it was time to leave. Would it be enough? Fingers were crossed.