‘Fastest woman on wheels’ dies in bid to break 512mph record
A RACING car driver has been killed as she attempted to break the women’s landspeed record of 512mph.
Jessi Combs, who was also a TV presenter, died as she piloted a powerful car built from a decommissioned fighter jet.
Her family announced the 36-year-old’s death in a statement but details of Tuesday’s crash in the US state of Oregon have not been released.
The American was hailed as ‘fastest woman on four wheels’ after setting a record of 398mph in her jet-powered North American Eagle Supersonic Speed Challenger in 2013.
But she died trying to beat the 512mph women’s land- speed record set in 1976 by American daredevil Kitty O’Neil in her threewheeled rocket car the Motivator.
The location for both drives was Alvord Desert, a dry lake bed in south- eastern Oregon. Miss Combs had chronicled her bid to beat the record on social media.
This week, in a post on Instagram she wrote: ‘It may seem a little crazy to walk directly into the line of fire... those who are willing, are those who achieve great things. People say I’m crazy. I say thank you.’
Her grieving family’s statement said: ‘Jessi’s most notable dream was to become the fastest woman on Earth, a dream she had been chasing since 2012.
‘She was one of the rare dreamers with the bravery to turn those possibilities into reality, and she left this earth driving faster than any other woman in history.’
Miss Combs, who began her career as a builder of hot-rod cars, was seen on US television in a number of auto shows, including Overhaulin’, Truck U, MythBusters and All Girls Garage.
Her close friend and teammate Terry Madden described yesterday her as an ‘amazing spirit’.
‘ Unfortunately we lost her yesterday in a horrific accident,’ he said on Instagram.
‘I was the first one there and, trust me, we did everything humanly possible to save her.’
Last night, her former MythBusters co-presenter Adam Savage tweeted: ‘I’m so so sad, Jessi Combs has been killed in a crash.
‘She was a brilliant and topnotch builder, engineer, driver, fabricator, and science communicator. She strove every day to encourage others by her prodigious example. She was also
‘She strove to encourage others’
a colleague and we are lesser for her absence.’
Miss Combs joined the North American Eagle Supersonic Speed Challenger team as a driver in 2013. She was also the first woman to compete in The Race of Gentlemen, in which modified vintage cars race on a New Jersey beach.
Miss O’Neil, who died last November of illness aged 72, had overcome the obstacle of being left deaf by a childhood illness to become a stuntwoman.
Briton Andy Green holds the land speed record of 763mph set in Black Rock Desert, Nevada, in 1997. He was piloting the fourwheeled ThrustSSC, a supersonic jet car.