R. M. CLARKE
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 speedking 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. If I had to nominate a favourite of all the periods covered by this Brooklands Books Land Speed Record series, it would perhaps be this fourth which traces the story from Cobb's one-way clocking of 403 mph in 1947, to Craig Breedloves landmark 407 in 1963. Not much progress in 16 years, you might think, but that era was one of the most fertile in history, and would give birth to the machinery which would revolutionise record breaking. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Cobb went back to Bonneville and set what would become the longest-standing record of them all: 394 mph. What made that even more remarkable is that, though nobody attempted to better it during the Fifties, no fewer than five contenders took aim at it at Bonneville in 1960. And more came into the arena in the years that followed that Great Confrontation. Yet somehow Cobb's mark remained unbeatable. Athol Graham, a Mormon from Salt Lake City, died in his attempt in August 1960. Sir Malcolm Campbell's son Donald crashed his own lavish Bluebird at more than 300. Art Arfons Green Monster Anteater was not man enough for the job. Mickey Thompson's brilliant four-engined Challenger was denied the place it truly deserved in history by the heart-breaking failure of a five dollar driveshaft, after a one-way run at 406. And Dr. Nathan Ostichs revolutionary Flying Caduceus went to its current museum resting place in Reno with nothing greater to its name than the accolade of ushering in the jet age. Two years later Glenn Leasher's Infinity took him to his death at more than 300 mph at Bonneville, as Craig Breedlove was headed home with a Spirit of America jet tricycle that wouldn't steer properly. But when Breedlove returned the following year to achieve 407.45 mph, it didn't matter that the FIA refused to recognise the pure-thrust projectile as a car
