Bonneville lures fast old guys, too

BONNEVILLE SALT FLATS — Burt Munro wasn't the only fast old guy on the salt.

In 1967, Munro, a New Zealand motorcycle racer who was in his late 60s, drove his 1920 Indian Scout bike to a world record on the Bonneville Salt Flats. His story attracted worldwide interest in last year's movie "The World's Fastest Indian," filmed on the salt flats and starring Anthony Hopkins.

But racers older than Munro was then aren't hard to find at Speed Week.

Whether tuning up cars, checking vehicle performance on laptops or seated at the wheel of some meteor roaring across the glaring white flats, speed demons at least 70 years old are a significant presence here.

That's not to say that a lot of young folks aren't here, too. In fact, a huge proportion of drivers and crew serving the 500 vehicles entered in Speed Week this year are decades younger, as are many of the estimated 25,000 spectators. The event began last Saturday and runs through Friday.

"Well, the car kind of bounces around a little bit, but it generally goes pretty straight," said Dave Ratliff, an 80-year-old resident of Norco, Calif. His comment was interrupted by the BUZZzzzzz of a vehicle flying past on the track.

Ratliff raced in the first Bonneville speed trials back in 1949. After a morning race on Tuesday, he and friends were in the pit area, working on his yellow race car in the shelter of a translucent blue canopy.

"I've got a 1929 Ford roadster with a '55 Desoto Hemi engine in it, running on gasoline," he said. With the hood off, the waist-high vehicle didn't look like something from the 1920s. A big aluminum vent stuck through the front plate of what would have been the radiator, to suck air into the engine.

How has it been running?

"Well, this year, not so fast, but in the past, I've been a little over 200," Ratliff said.

"The car kind of bounces around a little bit, but it generally goes pretty straight," he said. "When you're going fast, all your movements should be very slow, because if you don't, you're liable to cross up and start spinning."

That has never happened to him, Ratliff added.

"It's quite a deal to come up here every year and see people you only see once a year. And it's kind of a social event, as well as a racing event."