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Driver who broke the sound barrier attempts another land speed record in Utah

The first — and only — person to break the sound barrier in a car hits the track in Utah this week with new wheels and his eye on another record.

Twenty years ago, British driver Andy Green set the land speed record for a diesel-powered car, reaching 350.092 mph at Utah’s famous Bonneville Salt Flats. Green will return to the lunarlike landscape Tuesday and try to beat that mark, this time with a hydrogen-powered car.

The retired Royal Air Force fighter pilot aims not only to win another accolade but to showcase the power of hydrogen as a clean-energy alternative. It’s the “fuel of the future,” Green told The Associated Press in a July interview.

Green will be driving the 32-foot JCB Hydromax, the brainchild of British construction equipment manufacturer JCB. The car is bright yellow, long and slim, resembling a pencil. It’s powered by two hydrogen internal combustion engines with a combined 1,600 horsepower, which were adapted from engines used in the company’s construction machinery. They mix pressurized hydrogen gas with air and ignite it to create bursts of power.

In targeting the diesel-powered record, Green also hopes to easily clear the world land speed records for hydrogen internal combustion engines (185 mph) and electric vehicles (341 mph).

Green hit a new top speed of 368 mph in practice last week, but to officially earn the hydrogen record, he’ll have to do it Tuesday in front of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile, the international governing body of motor sports.

One thing Tuesday’s attempt will assuredly not do is approach the supersonic speeds Green reached with jet power three decades ago.

Green had already been flying supersonic military aircraft when he spotted a newspaper ad that read: “Wanted: High-speed driver to break the sound barrier,” according to the Guinness World Records. In 1997, he traveled faster than the speed of sound and set the outright land speed record — 763.035 mph — in a car powered by twin jet engines. His runs in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert produced sonic booms that shook the nearby town of Gerlach.

Now 64 years old, Green said he thought he was done racing but came out of retirement when JCB approached him with plans for the new car. The company has invested more than $134 million into hydrogen-powered engines that it says emit no carbon dioxide from the tailpipes.

Since the first race there in 1914, the glassy surface of the Bonneville Salt Flats has drawn generations of drivers seeking to set new land speed records. A remnant of a prehistoric lake bed, the salt flats are about 100 miles west of Salt Lake City and sit atop an aquifer that cools the tires of the cars.

Spectators must stand about a quarter of a mile (400 meters) from the course’s straightaway, which is 10 miles long, and often watch through wide-angle binoculars.

The expanse on the border of Utah and Nevada has also been a backdrop for movies including “Independence Day” and “The World’s Fastest Indian,” and the series finale of “Mad Men.”

Green will start about an hour before sunrise Tuesday. His attempt comes a year after a driver going 283 mph died trying to set a land speed record at Bonneville’s annual Speed Week. Chris Raschke lost control of his rocketlike vehicle called the Speed Demon last August and died from his injuries.


(AP Photo Douglas C. Pizac)
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