Bloodhound LSR, the British project aiming to break the world land speed record, has clocked its highest speed to date as testing gathers pace in South Africa.
Former RAF pilot and test driver Andy Green drove the jet-powered machine to a top speed of 334mph during a test run on the Hakskeenpan salt pan in the Kalahari Desert, beating his previous best of 200mph recorded at Newquay airport in 2017.
After two trial runs, the first to 100mph and then to 200mph, Green fired up the afterburner of the vehicle’s Eurofighter Typhoon-sourced EJ200 jet engine for the 334mph run, PistonHeads reports. It took just 12 seconds to reach that speed, a level of performance that no current production car comes close to.
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The next phase of the test will see the Bloodhound team increase the vehicle’s speed in 50mph increments for each run, with the target being 500mph in four weeks’ time, the motoring news site says.
There’s still some way to go before Green takes the machine up to the ultimate aim of 1,000mph, but the test shows that the project is back on course after the programme hit the skids a year ago.
What saved the Bloodhound project?
Bloodhound Programme Ltd, as the project was formerly called, entered administration in October last year after it ran out of funds, in spite of the vehicle being “all but built”, the BBC reports.
Six months later British entrepreneur Ian Warhurst, who made his money selling turbochargers, bought the outfit and moved its operations from Avonmouth, Bristol, to Berkeley, Gloucestershire, the broadcaster adds.
“I’ve been following Bloodhound for years,” Warhurst said in an interview with Top Gear. “When I found out the car was in administration I thought, ‘that’s a shame but maybe it’s just a way of trying to regroup and keep the creditors at bay while they get more funding in’.
“And then I got a text from my son Charlie saying, ‘Hey Dad, have you seen the car’s for sale, why don’t you go buy it? Hahaha’”, he added. Warhurst promptly bought Bloodhound after meeting the administrators at the project’s former Bristol base.
The programme, now called Bloodhound LSR (the LSR standing for land speed record), will still rely on sponsorship agreements to fund development and testing, but Warhurst told Top Gear that he will act as a guarantor if money runs out.
Who currently holds the land speed record?
Even if Green doesn’t set a new world record with Bloodhound LSR, he’ll still lay claim to being the fastest person on Earth.
On 15 October 1997, the pilot drove the jet-engined Thrust SSC to a speed of 763.035mph, the current land speed record, and he became the first person to drive a car to supersonic speeds, Autocar reports.
The Bloodhound LSR team believes that its vehicle can reach the 800mph mark, with the first record attempt expected to take place in late 2020, the motoring magazine says. But the team hasn’t set a date for its “much tougher objective” of reaching 1,000mph on land.
