Video: Bonneville Speed Week

It went by so fast that we almost missed the annual Bonneville Speed Week! Every year in late August, over 500 competitors gather at Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats to test their own personal speed limits and try to break new records, competing in vehicles of all shapes and sizes.

Speed demons have been traveling to the flats for 62 years, and last year, photographers Andrew Owen and Ross McDermott documented Speed Week as part of their American Festivals Project, partially funded by a National Geographic Young Explorer Grant. Check out their photos from 2009′s races, see some of the winning times, and read the recap of the week from Speed by Spectre, one of the fastest teams out on the flats, who set a land speed record this year of 356 miles per hour. For a sense of the speed, check out one of their videos from a race (in this one, they average 324 miles per hour). For an even more intense glimpse, watch the video of the driver in his cockpit; it looks as though the skin is about to peel off his face.

[American Festivals Project: Bonneville Speed Week]
[Popular Mechanics: Bonneville Field Guide]
[Speed by Specter Blog]
[Salt Lake Tribune]