On August 13, 2022, the Bonneville Motorcycle Speed Trials organizers officially announced that the 2022 event is canceled. This year's speed trials had originally been scheduled to take place from August 28 through September 1, 2022. Due to flooding on the Bonneville Salt Flats, the BMST, FIM Land Speed World Records, and AMA Land Speed Grand Championship is officially canceled for 2022.
For those who haven’t been keeping track of the weather systems over the area, there was a heavy initial storm that brought flooding, along with subsequent additional storms that brought even more flooding to the salt flats. On August 12, organizers did an aerial assessment of the state of the standard track area. It found that “the entire length of our tracks and beyond are flooded.”
The following day, organizers got boots on the ground and waded out across the tracks to take measurements. They found that the flooding across the tracks ranged from levels between 4 inches (102mm) and 10 inches (254mm) across the full length of the tracks.
Although the area is drying, it is unfortunately not drying quickly enough for the event to take place. Since the storms hit, there has been less than a 0.75-inch (19mm) decrease in the water level across the track—which means there’s no chance it will be dry enough for track preparations and operations to take place.
“We are all disappointed that we are forced to cancel,” event director and owner Delvene Reber said in a statement. “Like you, we have spent a year plus preparing for this event and investing in improvements. This year we were implementing racer driven improvements that include new flagging, course line improvements, and other racer driven updates.”
According to Reber and the BMST organization, over the coming week, they will directly contact participants to provide further information about the next steps in event cancellation procedures, as well as answer questions. Topics specifically mentioned in the announcement include refund options, rollovers to the 2023 event, and of course continued support of the event via donations.
As and when further information becomes available, we’ll be sure to keep you updated. For the moment, BMST organizers advise that all interested parties should mark down August 26 through 21, 2023 on their calendars for the 2023 Bonneville Motorcycle Speed Trials event.
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