Wet salt isn't all that useful in land speed record racing, either. Wet conditions and bad weather shut down Bonneville Speed Week for the second year in a row this summer, and they didn't much help Venturi and Ohio State in their electric land speed record hopes last week. The team battled through, and while the VBB-3 streamliner didn't reach the high speeds it's capable of, it did set a new category world record of 240.320 mph (386.757 km/h).

The last time we caught up with French electric car specialist Venturi Automobiles, it was showing a rather awesome electric dune buggy at last year's Paris Motor Show. About a year before that, it first revealed the Venturi Buckeye Bullet 3 (VBB-3), a 3,000-hp battery-powered land rocket designed to best Venturi's own 2010 electric land speed record mark of 307 mph (495 km/h). At that time, it estimated that the VBB-3, developed with Ohio State's Center for Automotive Research, would be able to hit speeds in the 440-mph (708-km/h) ballpark. 

Problem is, the VBB-3 hasn't gotten the chance to properly stretch its legs. Wet weather at Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats in 2013 forced the Venturi/OSU team to reschedule its first record attempt for the following summer. Summer 2014 came, and so did the storms, leaving Venturi to settle for a 212-mph (341-km/h) electric vehicle record in the over 3.5-tonne class (FIA Category A Group VIII Class 8) in place of the absolute record the VBB-3 was engineered for.