THE LAND SPEED RECORD 1963-1999

THE LAND SPEED RECORD 1963-1999

R. M. CLARKE

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Código:
14268
Idioma:
INGLES
Editorial:
CP PRESS UNIQUE MOTOR BOOKS
Materia
Competición americana
ISBN:
978-1-84155-326-9
Páginas:
140
Encuadernación:
PORTADA EN RUSTICA
Medidas:
270 mm x 200 mm
26,50 €
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The land speed record. Motorsport distilled to its most fundamental elements - Distance versus Time. There is something intensely appealing about that, for it is the pure essence of speed and little else. There is none of the visceral, adrenaline-pumping thrill of Grand Prix racing about land speed record breaking. Indeed, it is ironic that in a branch of the sport where speeds are astronomically higher than they are in Formula One, there is none of the glamour and the glitz one associates with the 16-ring circus. Instead, the speed seeker all too frequently finds himself and his dedicated team miles from anywhere, in some of the most inhospitable (yet breathtakingly beautiful) parts of the globe. He will spend his time waiting for nature to be benign, eyeing the curvature of the earth, fighting the ennui of isolation and hoping like hell that it isn't going to rain. It is a cold-blooded affair that requires a special kind of courage and determination. To me it has always been an ultimate test, a peculiar measure of an individual, an unusual means of judging the worth of his claim to heroic status even though, almost to a man, such self-aggrandisement is never part of their personal thinking. I don't think I've met a speed king yet who wasn't a reluctant hero. My personal fascination with the land speed record was fired even before my passion for Grand Prix racing, in the days long before I graduated to secondary school. And I give a nod of thanks to the gods of fate that I have been fortunate enough in my professional life to meet many of the people concerned intimately with record breaking, and on two occasions to have been present when Britain pushed the barriers forward. Some speak with awe of the total eclipse of the sun, but there is no sight I have encountered more impressive than that of ThrustSSC charging like a big black locomotive down the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, chased by a roostertail of dust, outrunning its own noise. Nor any sound more emotionally charging than the two sonic booms that took Andy Green and Richard Noble into the history books. As people are wont to say of events that somehow change the world, you had to be there to appreciate it. The sheer splendour and beauty of if all. And was it ever thus. Throughout LSR history, men have savoured such pivotal moments as they have waged war on speed on public roads, racetracks, frozen lakes, beaches, salt flats and alkali playas. Long may they continue their quest. This fifth volume of Brooklands Books Land Speed Record series covers one of the eras closest to my own heart, for I was there for much of it. I was still at school, however, when Craig Breedlove and Art Arfons waged that incredible game of jet roulette at Bonneville in 1964 and '65, when their explosion of speed wiped away the 413.20 mph record with which Tom Green and Walt Arfons had officially been acknowledged as the first jetcar record holders. In retrospect we know that the duellists could add so much speed each time out because they did not run all the time with full power or full reheat, but these were the early days of jetcars and nothing should detract from the drama of their achievements. Nor from the danger. Breedlove survived high-speed immersion in a brine lake, Arfons the 600 mph accident that destroyed the Green Monster. Then there was Gary Gabelich and the wonderful science and elegance of the rocket-powered Blue Flame; and the still-reverberating controversy of the publicity-hungry Budweiser Rocket and its spurious claim to the sound barrier. And then came the gung-ho Englishman Richard Noble, and the Thrust 2 project that gave me my own ticket to Bonneville and the Black Rock Desert. Later still, that similarly motivated Australian showman Rosco McGlashan, with whom fate dealt so harshly. Men who sought the land speed record not for personal gain, but because it was their way of doing something for their country. The latest battle between Noble, Andy Green and ThrustSSC, and Craig Breedlove's Spirit of America, Sonic Arrow, was an echo of that very first confrontation between Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat and Camille Jenatzy. Less than a century after he had begun to seek ultimate speed on land, man had gone supersonic and outrun the speed of sound. Some believe it will end there, but as long as men have imagination and courage, and the sheer geography to let both run wild, there will always be somebody tilting at the windmill. Somebody who believes he can go quicker than the current Fastest Man on Earth.

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