Bonneville is the ultimate test of man and machine. The sun beats down on you no matter what you do, and being inside a car without air conditioning will make you question why driving is so much fun. Cars get hot, motors cry out for mercy, and every part that lasts a whole season of drag racing will see that same season’s worth of wear in just about a week. It’s nuts. It’s arguably stupid to even set yourself up for the possible failure, and yet all of us idiots just keep coming back. Why? Because it’s so damned beautiful in every way. The salt, the sky, the cars, the sounds of exhaust and air and tires on salt at a jillion miles per hour are to cool for words.
And as is typical here at Bonneville, Sunday was relatively drama ridden with cars setting the first records of 2012 right out of the box, others qualifying to run for record return runs on Monday morning, and plenty of engine parts being sacrificed for the gods. And as if that wasn’t enough, there was the added wonder of water falling from the sky in buckets while moving mostly in a horizontal direction thanks to the 35 plus mph wind. No bueno. Luckily it only rained and blew for a half hour or so and with the heat we were back racing in about 90 more minutes.
We didn’t get to run Lee Sicilio’s much anticipated ’69 Dodge Daytona for its first checkout pass today, but it’s schedule to run sometime mid morning tomorrow so we’ll keep you posted.
Tomorrow we’ll be hitting the salt at 6am to grab photos of guys working by moonlight and headlight alike getting ready for the 7am roll to the staging lanes for record return runs. We’ll snap more photos, grab some results, and even get some video going in Lee’s Daytona. So stay tuned for even more cool Bonneville coverage and check out what we’ve already posted below.
C
Thanks for the pics! Hope everyone is staying dry.