Land-speed driver dies in crash at Bonneville’s fabled salt flats

The head of the organization that runs an annual land-speed event at Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats said Monday that an investigation is ongoing into the death of veteran driver Chris Raschke.

Bonneville Nationals Inc. chairman Heather Black confirmed via email reports that the vehicle Raschke was piloting Sunday went airborne as he lost control of it at approximately the 2½-mile mark. The vehicle, Speed Demon 3, was traveling at nearly 300 mph at the time, according to a report by Hot Rod magazine.

Raschke, 60, was treated by medical personnel at the scene before he died from his injuries, the BNI-affiliated Southern California Timing Association said Sunday in a statement. He was said to have been in pursuit of a speed record.

“We are deeply devastated,” the Speed Demon team said Sunday in a statement.

At last year’s Bonneville Speed Week, Raschke posted the fastest speed, 446.716 mph, over the five-mile course (via Hot Rod). His performance then, at the helm of the previous Speed Demon, reportedly included a recorded exit speed of 459.734 mph, the fastest of that week. That earned him a coveted “black hat,” given to members of the 400-mph club.

Located approximately 110 miles west of Salt Lake City and just east of the Nevada border, the Bonneville Salt Flats began attracting automobile racers in 1907 and, in 1935, became the site of a new world land-speed record of 301.13 mph (via the University of Utah). In the 1960s, legendary racecar driver Craig Breedlove used the flat, glassy surfaces at Bonneville to become the first person to officially zoom past the 400-, 500- and 600-mph marks in jet engine-propelled vehicles.

The Speed Demon team advertises its vehicle as “currently the fastest piston engine/wheel driven car in the world.” This year marked the unveiling of a new Speed Demon after the previous iteration was sent to a museum last year in the wake of the death of team founder George Poteet, who was said to have died at his home at 76. Poteet is credited by his team with the most times of 400-plus mph at Bonneville Speed Week. Among the speed records Poteet set at Bonneville is a 2020 mark of 470.015 in his Speed Demon’s blown-fuel streamliner class.

According to a biography on the Speed Demon website, Raschke got his start in the auto racing world in the early 1980s at Ventura (California) Raceway and soon connected with future members of the Speed Demon team. In addition to honing his driver skills, Raschke was said to have learned many aspects of the motorsports industry, including construction and maintenance of racing vehicles, giving him an “invaluable” breadth of knowledge.

“Chris Raschke was admirable in all the best and truest senses of the word,” Fox Sports drag racing analyst Brian Lohnes said Monday (via Hot Rod). “He was a pillar of an industry, he was a skilled operator of one of the fastest wheel driven cars in history, and he was, like so many of us, fully consumed with cars and the universe around them.”