WHILE AKATIFF PLOTS to raise the bar, it's life as usual in the pits. A woman sits astride a painstakingly modified Harley, complete with a custom–painted gas tank featuring a naked nymph straddling a salt shaker. She's waiting with dozens of other riders for a few fleeting minutes of track time. Elsewhere, there's a guy whose "pit," like so many others, includes little more than a dinky canopy, a workstand, and milk crates that double as chairs. He soldiers on, with a wrench in each hand, at the rear end of a 50–year–old Vincent motorcycle.

Such are the realities at Bonneville: It's a place for people who thrive on mechanized speed, and it's obvious why they love it here. "The reason we go down the track is the same reason Hillary went up the mountain," says "Landspeed" Louise Ann Noeth, a former land–speed team member and author of the book Bonneville: The Fastest Place on Earth. "That's part of who we are."

The streamliner guys feel the same tug, but their machines are from another planet. Streamliners don't even start as street machines. Instead, they employ hundreds of custom–made parts that get field–tested at most a few times a year. Streamliner builders don't work on the premise of whether something will go wrong but when.

Manning's career has been haunted by technical failures. Two years ago, with Robinson ripping along at 290 in Seven, the fire–extinguisher system short–circuited. As chemical agents rained down on him, Robinson tried opening the dragster–style parachutes, but they failed. In a last–ditch effort to save himself, he slammed on and quickly overheated the ancillary brakes, which stopped the bike but also caught fire. Less than ten seconds after Robinson got out of the burning motorcycle, heat buildup in the rear tire made it explode.

BUB 2006 threatened to trigger similar fireworks, because it promised to be exceptionally fast. Previous months had seen almost no rain at Bonneville, meaning the salt would be drier and the course could extend twice as long as it does after a typically wet summer. A longer track means more time to build up speed. It also means more opportunity for those custom–made parts to fail. 

Manning and Wheeler, Bonneville's snakebit veterans, were especially wary. To minimize the chance of a breakdown, Manning reduced the stressful boost pressure on the turbocharger of his one and only, homemade, four–cylinder engine, which he claims to have spent a fortune developing.

The 63–year–old Wheeler, meanwhile, took his time getting to Bonneville, because he thought he was on the brink of tire failure. The bespectacled engineer, who's been streamlining motorcycles since 1963, has been riding the same bike since 1991, a time when high–speed tires were readily available. But nowadays, tire manufacturers are out of the sport. They see little upside to the expensive development of products for a few speed demons who might turn around and sue if a tread or sidewall fails. Akatiff and Manning still have usable rubber. Wheeler, though, is down to the threads. Before coming to Bonneville this year, he'd decided to make only one set of runs.

On the morning of day three, Chris Carr, a small and fearless rider, slides into Seven, Manning's overhauled bright–red streamliner. With Carr pulling on his driving gloves, Manning urges caution. “Go 325. If it feels good, 330,” he says. “We don’t have to get it all at once.”

Then, for the umpteenth time in Manning’s streamliner career, his bike suffers an equipment problem. But this one is rather pleasant.

According to the streamliner’s speedometer, Carr blasted through the trap at 335 miles per hour. But the instrument was off: He was actually going 354. His return trip clocks in at 347 miles per hour, giving Seven a two–way average of 351 and breaking the Ack Attack’s record by nearly ten miles per hour.

“I feel like a president,” Manning blubbers as a small cluster of cameramen and reporters close in around him.

Akatiff, watching from his pit, is stunned. “I thought, This can’t be,” he’ll tell me later.

First thing the next morning, Wheeler enjoys a memorable ride of his own. E–Z–Hook, his lime–green, Kawasaki–powered streamliner, goes a meet–best 355 miles per hour through the trap. But before he can rein in the motorcycle, the front tire disintegrates. Wheeler dumps the bike on its right side and skids for almost a quarter–mile. Fortunately, he’s OK, but without a second run, he doesn’t get the record.

Later, sitting in his pit and drinking a beer, Wheeler looks at his banged–up sled and tries to draw a positive from the wipeout. “Well,” he says, “now we know at what speed the tire blows up.”