The Fastest Man in Town

Some people can brag they've jumped out of an airplane. Others can say they've gone scuba diving with sharks.

Very few, however, can say they've driven a car over 250 miles per hour.

Danville's Justin Walsh is one of those people.

Walsh, the proprietor of Norm's Place on Hartz Avenue, is in the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah this week where he is racing roadsters at the Southern California Timing Association's Bonneville Speed Week.  

"I started coming out here in 1986 and I've never missed a speed week since," Walsh said. "I started driving out here when I was 21 in our family's 1932 Roadster."

This time around, Walsh will be driving two cars—a 1934 Ford Roadster and the "Blowfish," a 1969 Plymouth Barracuda. The fastest he's ever gone was 269 mph, but he's hoping to reach 315 in the Blowfish.

Preparing the cars for the race is no easy task.

"Thousands of hours go into getting these cars race ready," Walsh said. "We spend three to four hours a week for an entire year on these cars, and then only race them for a week."

The one week they do race is, according to Walsh, magical.

"[Speed Week at Bonneville] is impossible to describe," he said. "You stand on what seems like snow as white as white can be and as flat as flat can be.

"It's a spiritual place, it gets in your blood and you just get hooked—it's speed racing's Cooperstown."

The course at Bonneville is a completely straight, five-mile track. The last mile is the one that counts, however.

A car's speed is calculated as the average of the velocity at the fourth mile marker and fifth mile marker. Even though the track is a perfect line, racing a roadster is not as easy as it seems.

"A good driver can feel what the car is doing as an extension of his or her body and can sense what's going to happen before it happens," Walsh said. "You can't just smash the pedal to the floor and hope for the best."

Walsh said the best way to improve one's driving is through plenty of experience.

Even though the roadsters go in a straight line down the immensely flat Bonneville Salt plains, there are still inherent hazards when racing a car at speeds of 250 mph.

"There's definitely an aspect of danger in the sport," Walsh said. "It's just something you accept and part of what goes on out there. When Henry [Ford] built these cars, they weren't meant to go at these kinds of speeds. Taking these older cars and adding tons of horse power to them obviously involves some risk."

Walsh said he's spun out before, but he's always been able to walk away without major injury.

Walsh's team consists of five people, including his father and his uncle. He said the five of them have been working on cars for over 20 years. Even though Justin is the one driving, all team members get a thrill from building them.

"Obviously I get the biggest kick from driving the cars, but we all enjoy building them," Walsh said. "[The other team members] just do it for themselves and nothing else."

According to Walsh, what makes speed racing an admirable sport is that there is no money to be made, and everyone does it purely for the love of the sport.

Speed Week began Saturday Aug. 14 and runs until Friday Aug. 20 in the Bonneville Salt Flats about 88 miles West of Salt Lake City, Utah, just off Interstate 80. Results are here.