The Citizen (Gauteng)

Hybrid racer stops for a boost

BLOODHOUND: LAND SPEED RECORD BID WILL RESUME IN 2021 WITH ROCKET ENGINE

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There’s a way to go before the racer is ready to break the record of 1 223.657km/h.

Aloud hiss rips through the stillness of southern Africa’s Kalahari Desert. It sounds like a fighter jet flying low over the Hakskeen pan, an isolated dry lake bed in the Northern Cape province, near the Namibian border.

Then a thick cloud of sand appears on the horizon, growing steadily as it draws near. In the blink of an eye, a racing car shoots by with a deafening screech and pelts towards the opposite end of the salt pan.

The Bloodhound is gearing up to try to break the land speed record, which stands at 1 223.657km/h.

There’s still a way to go before the super racer is ready for that attempt, but today driver Andy Green is pleased. “We have reached 904km/h,” he said, beaming as he lifts himself out of the cockpit, helmet in hand.

“First thing in the morning, plenty of thrust, nice calm wind, so the car ran absolutely straight.”

The British-built Bloodhound stands sleekly behind him, dust still hovering in its wake. The white parachute that helps it brake lies crumpled on the cracked ochre soil.

“Good parachute deployment,” adds the Briton, as the vehicle is towed into a large air-conditione­d tent nearby. “That’s pretty much the perfect run,” he said.

The Bloodhound was designed exclusivel­y for speed and the team hopes, if possible, to get up to 1 609.3km/h.

The vehicle resembles a wingless jet on aluminium wheels, with a long white body topped by an engine and a stabiliser. Its design is miles ahead of the bullet-shaped electric car in which French aristocrat Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat set the first land speed record on December 18, 1898 – pushing the vehicle’s spoke wheels to 63.15km/h.

“You can call it that, a jet engine with wheels, but it’s far more sophistica­ted than that,” said Stuart Edmondson, head of Bloodhound operations.

Chief engineer Mark Chapman described the racer as “part Formula 1” and “part jet fighter”.

The engine, built by Rolls Royce, once powered a Royal Air Force (RAF) Eurofighte­r Typhoon fighter jet. It was recycled from three decommissi­oned versions of the Typhoon’s engine, released by Britain’s defence ministry, “without the handbooks”, chuckles a Bloodhound team member.

“It’s a car designed to go at 1 600km/h,” said Chapman, adding that at top speed it would be almost 400km/h faster than a Typhoon at the same altitude.

“The big issues were aerodynami­cs, keeping it on the ground,” he said. “You don’t want it to be a plane.”

As the engine’s nine tons of thrust are still unable to break the sound barrier, Chapman and his team plan to give it a boost with a rocket engine. Green is not intimidate­d by the prospect. The 57-year RAF pilot has held the land speed record since 1997. “It’s a very different sensation,” to flying a fighter jet, Green said. “A very different environmen­t ... [and] vehicle.”

But the skills and the “second by second” decisions needed to stay in control are like flying a jet fighter “at the limits of its performanc­e”, he added.

Green said the main difficulty was keeping the land vehicle steady. “The car starts to move around at about 300km/h, at 350km/h it starts to almost skate on the surface,” he said. “It’s like driving on hard, packed snow in a normal car.”

At such high speed, the slightest mistake or technical glitch can be fatal. In August, the American profession­al racer, Jessi Combs, was killed during a test run for a land speed record attempt in Oregon’s Alvord Desert in the US.

In the Kalahari, safety is managed by the Bloodhound team’s only female member, Jessica Kinsman. The 39-year-old air traffic controller makes sure to minimise any source of danger along the 16km desert track.

Nothing escapes her eagle eyes, be it the wind factor, obstacles or a slight anomaly in the vehicle’s motion.

“Here, it’s almost an airfield, there is a runway, there is an aircraft, more or less,” said Kinsman comparing the car to a plane, from her viewpoint overlookin­g the desert in the elevated glass-faced control station. “We have the final say on a number of things,” she added, with a smile.

Meanwhile, a man discreetly oversees the mechanics as the team busies itself around the Bloodhound in the cool-aired tent.

Ian Warhurst is the racer’s proud owner. He saved the failing project last year by buying the Bloodhound, which was on the verge of being dismantled and sold as spare parts. Ex-owner of a turbocharg­er manufactur­er in Britain, he said that amount was “nothing” compared to money “you need to spend for projects like, say, Formula 1 teams”.

Warhurst, 50, who retired last year after making his fortune, defended his new carbon-intensive hobby as a source of “inspiratio­n”. He said he hoped the team’s work would inspire others to advance new technologi­es, especially in becoming carbon-neutral.

The car is now headed back to its home base in Britain for more tweaking and the new rocket engine, before returning to the Kalahari by mid-2021 for another attempt. –

 ??  ?? TESTING. The jet-propelled British Bloodhound Land Speed Record car after a run of about 900km/h during preliminar­y tests at Hakskeen pan in the Northern Cape last month.
TESTING. The jet-propelled British Bloodhound Land Speed Record car after a run of about 900km/h during preliminar­y tests at Hakskeen pan in the Northern Cape last month.
 ?? Pictures: AFP ?? INSPIRATIO­N. Ian Warhurst, funder of the British Bloodhound Land Speed Record team, talks about the project during preliminar­y tests at Hakskeen pan in the Northern Cape.
Pictures: AFP INSPIRATIO­N. Ian Warhurst, funder of the British Bloodhound Land Speed Record team, talks about the project during preliminar­y tests at Hakskeen pan in the Northern Cape.

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