Challenging world speed records can be tricky, especially when factors outside of your control step in to make things more complicated. That was the case during Triumph Motorcycles’ land speed record attempt at the Bonneville Salt Flats when tricky course conditions brought about by continuous rain in the location over the past few weeks resulted in an incident that led to the postponement of the record-setting attempt.

Although it didn’t specify the severity of the incident and the damages incurred by its Infor Rocket Streamliner, Triumph did say that the ride “lost traction on a damp section of the salt surface,” causing the machine’s rear end “to step out of line.” The streamliner is now expected to undergo a full inspection before it takes another crack at setting the world record.

Fortunately, rider Guy Martin wasn’t injured from the incident and is expected to take the wheel of the streamliner when it returns to the Salt Flats to attempt to set the land speed record. When that’s going to be is the tricky question. The team said that it plans to resume the record attempt once conditions allow it, but conditions at the Bonneville Salt Flats has become increasingly unpredictable in recent years as a handful of events have been called off, including the 2014 and 2015 editions of the Bonneville Speed Week event.

Absent of further details, all that’s left for is to sit and wait for updates from the team.

Continue after the jump to read the full story.

If at first you don't succeed, try again

The crash, or incident as Triumph describes it, is obviously a huge setback for the team for a number of reasons, chief among them being the time and money that goes into preparing for the attempt and actually executing it. Truth be told, world record attempts like this take up a lot of time from a lot of people. It’s not just something that happens overnight. There’s a lot of preparation that goes into land speed record attempts and the time that the team has spent preparing for the last attempt is all gone now. I don’t want to say that it’s back to square one, but the crash makes it seem like it.

Then there’s the finances that come with all of this. I don’t know the specifics of how much Triumph spends for these record attempts, but I assume that it costs the team a lot of money to just build the streamliner and fly those involved to Bonneville for the attempt. That doesn’t even take into consideration the salaries and the fees that come with all of the things tied into this attempt.

The good news is that Triumph seems undeterred about the incident and is taking steps to try it again. Nobody knows outside of the team when that attempt is going to be, but it’s still going to happen. When it does happen, let’s all hope for clear skies and a good mood from the salt gods.