This year’s wacky weather could claim yet another racing event on the Bonneville Salt flats warned the Utah Salt Flats Racing Association in a post on its web page:
“The USFRA is carefully watching changing conditions at the salt. We will make a World of Speed decision & announcement before Sept 1.
Watch this space for official USFRA updates as they become available.
-Racers-
With the cancellation of Speedweek, the USFRA has become concerned about the possibility of an overwhelming number of racers showing up at the last moment. The USFRA is a small organization, and we recognize the limits of our capacity. It is of great importance to the USFRA that we offer a quality meet to our entrants.
With this in mind, we are announcing a limit of 290 total entries for 2015 World of Speed.
We encourage anyone intending to run at WOS to register now.
We, the USFRA here in Salt Lake City are fully aware how difficult it is for all of you waiting for news of a World of Speed event.
As Bonneville Veterans know, salt flat surface conditions improve slowly, and can deteriorate in a matter of hours.
Currently conditions are steadily improving.
It is important to Club Management for you to know that, Locally, we volunteers of the USFRA are actively monitoring salt surface conditions.
Here in Salt Lake, the phone tree is functioning. Seldom do two locals meet and not ask whether there’s been any news. All of the Local USFRA folks, members, racers, Officers, our friends, our families,and even friends of friends, stop when traveling west and report back to Salt Lake on salt conditions.
We had a late spring here, and weather patterns this year have been just a bit odd.
We have solid reason, based on experience, to remain optimistic that we will have a Race Course in September.
We are also acutely aware that many racers travel long distances and need time to prepare. We sympathize with that situation and will do all we can to make good solid decisions, as early as possible and make clear and prompt announcements on www.saltflats.com whenever there is any Official News to share.”
For the first time in 20 years bad weather caused the cancellation of the Salt Flat’s premier racing event Speed Week two years in a row.
A little under 200 cars are expected to race in World of Speed a much smaller number than the 700 Speed Week draws.
According to the SCTA web page the amount of water dumped on the famous race was simply was too much to drain or evaporate before the start of the event.
The last time rain caused the cancellation of Speed Week was in 1994 but according to what few records were kept and the memory of old time Nevadans this year’s cancellation could be harbinger of several more in the coming decade.
Already unusually late spring storms drenched northern Nevada for almost two weeks this May supporting ranchers claims that rural Nevada is headed toward a wet cycle.
Those heavy rains both last year and this past spring caused a layer of mud to flow down from the surrounding mountains onto the salt flats, covering roughly 6 miles of the area usually converted into a race course.
“It’s disappointing but it is not the end of the world,” said Wendover Mayor Mike Crawford. “Some local businesses will take a hit but I would not say any will shut down because of the cancellation. Anyone who has lived here more than 25 years knows that there are good years and bad ones for Speed Week of any other events on the Salt Flats. Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s they were talking about canceling Speed Week forever because we had several wet years in a row. Then we had 25 dry years. I guess people got spoiled but there is no reason to panic.”
The cancellation of Speed Week in 2014 was blamed for a 10 percent drop in total gaming win July 2014, Gaming numbers for July 2015 are expected to be released next week.
