Bonneville 400: time to set a record

After two years in the making, Honda Racing F1 Team’s Bonneville 400 project is about to reach a thrilling conclusion. Next week, between 17th and 21st July 2006, the team will descend on the legendary Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, USA and attempt to set an outright land speed record for a Formula One car.

The original record attempt was scheduled for October 2005. But one of the worst weather sequences in living memory left the salt flats under water for most of the year and forced a postponement. Undeterred, the team retained its focus by running shakedown tests of its Bonneville 400 car at the Mojave airfield in California on 4th November 2005 setting an unofficial best speed of 413.205 km/h.

However, the team weren’t satisfied: the speed was right, but the place was wrong. The objective from the outset of the Bonneville 400 project was for the Honda Racing F1 Team to set the first official Land Speed Record for a Formula One car at Bonneville’s 40,000 square acres of salt flats which have been inextricably linked to cars and speed since the 1920s.

The Bonneville 400 project has been an incredible journey for the Honda Racing F1 Team, driven by enthusiasm and a determination to finally establish what speed its car could reach away from the confines of a race track.

The technical challenge of getting a race legal F1 car (albeit it with a few modifications for ultra high speed straight line running) to travel beyond 400 km/h on an unpredictable, unstable salt surface has proved to be a huge test for Bonneville 400 Technical Director Gary Savage and his small team:

“Next week sees the climax of a long two-year project for the Honda Racing F1 team. We hope that the result on the Salt Flats will reflect the hard work and dedication that has been put into this project by all the team both in the UK and Japan”.

The central character in this incredible story will inevitably be Bonneville 400 driver, Alan van der Merwe. The South African-born 26 year-old is charged with getting the job done:

“It’s been such a long build-up so I just feel totally prepared for it. Everybody has been working so hard over the last two years and is so well prepared that I don’t feel any apprehension - I just want to get out there and do it. It’s a good feeling to know that we are going to get on a plane next week and get it on. In fact, I wish I was on my way to Bonneville right now!”