In the fast lane: drivers gear up to set speed records at Utah's desolate Bonneville Salt Flats.(POINTS OF INTEREST)

Publication: Smithsonian

Publication Date: 01-AUG-05

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COPYRIGHT 2005 Smithsonian Institution

For a week every august, the Bonneville Salt Flats, 120 miles west of Salt Lake City, is the site of a summer ritual in which Yankee ingenuity meets the human fascination with fast cars. Hundreds of drivers congregate in sweltering desert heat to race candy-colored, homebuilt hot rods on hard-packed salt, a dazzling white straightaway as smooth as Formica. Although Bonneville is the world's largest racecourse and the place where most of the fastest land-speed records have been set, Speed Week is not to be confused with the Indy 500 or the Monaco Grand Prix, where drivers compete against one another. Here, drivers race against the clock.

Steve Burke, 57, has been coming to Bonneville since 1952, first as a spectator, then as a racer. He once flipped a car at 225 miles per hour and barrel-rolled another at 307 mph....

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