The Unlikely 1: What it Means to Race at Bonneville

Reader Contribution by Richard Backus
Published on December 19, 2017
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Ask any diehard motorcyclist for their short list of places they want to visit and, more importantly, ride, and odds are good the famed Bonneville Salt Flats outside of Wendover, Utah, will be at the top of that list. A visit isn’t that hard to arrange, but a ride on the fabled flats? Not so much. Unless, of course, you’re willing to take the time to make the necessary arrangements — and spend the necessary money — to compete for a Land Speed Record run. Most of us aren’t going to go the second route, but as Gary Ilminen discovered, you don’t have to pilot a 500mph projectile to qualify for a run at Bonneville.

Ilminen, an occasional Motorcycle Classics contributor and Ultimate Motorcycling’s associate online editor, made not just one, but four runs at Bonneville, and on the unlikeliest of motorcycles: a 1984 Honda V30 Magna and a 1974 Honda CB350F 4-cylinder. Those experiences are at the core of The Unlikely 1, Ilminen’s engrossing account of his learning curve preparing a bike — or in this case two bikes — for Bonneville and actually riding on the salt, a not-so-easy challenge for a number of reasons.

For one, there’s the question of what to ride. For Ilminen, the Magna was an easy choice. Why? He already had one, and in the 500cc Production class it could slot into he thought it had performance potential. Ilminen didn’t expect to shatter any records on the Magna, but he came closer than he expected — within 7.5mph in fact, a result he hardly could have predicted.

That first run in 2009 inspired him to return in 2010, this time on the CB350F, a bike he’d bought earlier that year as a rider but which, he came to realize, could slot into an unchallenged category, 350cc Production.

A two-way average speed of 72.63mph secured a record in the 350cc Production class — but for only a day. But convinced the lessons he’d learned so far could produce a winning run, he returned in 2012, this time with the Magna, again gunning for the 500cc Production class. Mother Nature is nothing if not fickle, however, and while he did get in one survey run, heavy rain the night before his planned record run closed the Salt Flats.

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