Andy Green drives JCB Hydromax to 406.320mph as FIA digitises land speed archives
On Tuesday, JCB’s Hydromax car, driven by Andy Green, took the hydrogen-powered International Automobile Federation (FIA) land speed record at Bonneville, reaching 406.320mph. The result coincides with the FIA’s programme to digitise more than two million documents and pictures from its archive, including the land speed record collection held in Valleiry, France, which will be made public shortly.
Green’s run joins his earlier achievements; he holds the current outright land speed record of 763.035mph set in 1997 in the ThrustSSC and became the only person to have broken the sound barrier on land. The FIA says the material now being examined includes hand-written notes, letters and official records annotated by those who witnessed or took part in attempts, adding a human element to the technical and photographic record. “This is the first time they’ve been available outside of the boxes that were stored in Valleiry,” said Roger Banowetz, the president of the FIA land speed records commission. “I was pushing to get the land speed record archive digitised, it’s really important to have that material available for everybody.”
The archive traces the contest back to the earliest marks at the end of the 19th century, when the Frenchman Count Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat set the first official figure in 1898 at 39.24mph in a Jeantaud car. Belgium’s Camille Jenatzy then entered the rivalry, and he and Laubat swapped records for two years until Jenatzy broke the 100kmh barrier in La Jamais Contente, a torpedo-shaped vehicle in which he sat bolt upright from the knees upward.
A surge of public interest followed as competitors worldwide sought the top spot. The collection highlights a British-dominated period after the first world war, with Kenelm Lee Guinness taking the record in a Sunbeam 350HP and Malcolm Campbell claiming four successes, joined in the 1930s by George Eyston and John Cobb. The record moved from 231mph at the start of the decade to 367mph by its close, and contemporary reports and photographs treated the attempts as front-page news.
Archival items capture technical and personal detail: pictures of Cobb’s Railton Special being assembled, a technical report noting the course was “unusually rough”, and photographs from Campbell’s 1935 runs at Bonneville including a time scorer with a handwritten note reading “early morning – clothes not yet removed” and images of the Blue Bird on the salt. Campbell recounted the 1935 run in the archive: “Suddenly a film of oil started to cover the windscreen and deadly fumes from the engine commenced to enter the cockpit and I realised that at any moment I might fade out,” he said. “However, we were fast approaching the end of the mile when there was a terrific explosion. The near-side front tyre had burst. By now the screen was opaque. I had a feeling as though dozens of nails were being driven through the top of my head, this being caused through inhaling the exhaust fumes, and in consequence regaining full control of the car was not very easy.”
Roger Banowetz emphasised the technical challenges of non-tarmac surfaces and the risks involved: “You just don’t get in the thing and put it on cruise control and go down the course,” observed Banowetz in Utah. The files also include correspondence between Campbell and Colonel CG Péron, the Association Internationale des Automobile Clubs Reconnus general secretary, showing Péron’s efforts to help Campbell find a suitable venue between 1928 and 1931, including enlisting French military assistance in Algeria; one letter begins “Mon General …”.
The postwar archive records a variety of classifications and formats. In 1959 an Austin-Healey Sprite set a record in international class G over 12 hours, covering 1,665 miles at an average speed of 138.75mph, with handwritten entries noting incidents such as when driver Gus Ehrman spun at 135mph: “Car spun outside measured line in 5th lap – run continued”. The 1960s saw a shift from wheel-driven cars to jet- and rocket-powered machines; Duncan Campbell’s 403.10mph wheel-driven mark in 1964 was the last before the FIA allowed thrust power. Craig Breedlove’s Spirit of America reached 407mph at Bonneville in 1963 but was not recognised at the time for regulatory reasons, and between 1963 and 1965 Breedlove and Art Arfons repeatedly exchanged the fastest time as speeds climbed to Breedlove’s 600.601mph in November 1965. The archive includes a telegram Breedlove sent confirming the new record and noting that, this time, his car did have four wheels.
This week’s Hydromax achievement sits alongside that century-long record of attempts and inventions, and the JCB team’s motto — “never content” — appears throughout the material. “The people that do this sport are admired because it’s unique in so much as if you can dream it, you can build it and you can race it,” said Banowetz.
The FIA’s digitisation project will bring the land speed record collection out of storage in Valleiry and onto public view shortly, linking the newly set Hydromax mark and Andy Green’s run to the wider documentary and photographic record of more than a century of record-breaking attempts.