Have you been looking forward to the 2023 Bonneville Motorcycle Speed Trials? If so, then I’m afraid we have some bad news for you. This event, which is an official Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM) Land Speed World Records event, has once again been canceled in 2023.
This marks the second year in a row that the BMST has been canceled. In 2022, the event was nixed due to flooding in the area. Although organizers kept a close eye on the conditions to monitor how they were resolving, it soon became clear that there was no way that course conditions would allow the annual event to take place during the period for which it had been scheduled. Thus, with heavy hearts, the organizers declared the event canceled and began to work with would-be participants on event cancellation procedures.
The 2023 event was originally scheduled take place from August 26 through 31, 2023. Now, in the aftermath of Hurricane Hilary, the Bonneville Salt Flats are an area where “significant rain” was delivered. In its cancellation notice, the BMST organizers noted that “Although there is wind, it is not drying the area and is instead pushing the water around, making multiple small moving lakes to contend with.”
“This is an utter disappointment to the motorcycle land speed racing community, as well as the FIM. Many of us had planned to travel back from the 2023 Bolivia Speed Trials all the way from the Salar de Uyuni in order to be at the Bonneville Salt Flats for BMST, but we are very sorry to hear that the weather has made it impossible to run this event,” FIM Land Speed Records technical director Dominique Hébrard said in a statement. The 2023 Bolivia Speed Trials ran from August 16 through 21.
“We put it all on the line every year and after the 2022 cancellation we were looking forward to an exceptional race surface and return of our amazing participants to twist the throttle and add their name to the record books. It is surprising and heart wrenching to be cancelling due to the impacts from Hurricane Hilary. We know that everyone wants an exceptional experience, and we are looking forward to next year when we will bring world class FIM and AMA motorcycle land speed racing back to the Bonneville Salt Flats,” BMST event director and owner Delvene Reber said in a separate statement.
We can’t know what the future holds, but here’s hoping that 2024 goes more smoothly for all involved.
