ETNZ eyes land speed record
Not satisfied with winning one of the most technically demanding sporting trophies in the world, America’s Cup holders Emirates Team New Zealand are preparing for an attempt at the wind-powered land speed world record.
During the lull between the 36th America’s Cup, which concluded in March 2021, and the 37th Cup (venue and date still to be announced) Emirates Team New Zealand took on the brief of developing a craft capable of challenging the land speed record.
The project is headed up and will be driven by Glenn Ashby. Besides having won three America’s Cups, an Olympic Silver Medal and 17 World Championships in four different classes, Australian Ashby grew up land yachting. This record attempt, he says, has been a personal dream since childhood and will be “one to tell the grandkids about”.
“I have never spent so much time on the computer as I have this past year,” explained Ashby. “Basically, from the point that Dalts [CEO Grant Dalton] said ‘let’s look at it’ after the finish of AC36, we have been all go. First job was a two-week in-depth feasibility study to ensure enough of a global understanding that this was something that could be done in a positive way for ETNZ and would not impact the team and its America’s
Cup objectives financially or resource wise.”
Since then a group of the formidable ENTZ design team, including the likes of
Guillaume Verdier and Romaric
Neyhousser, have been working on the new design.
The existing Wind Powered
Land Speed World Record was set at 126.1mph
(202.9km/h) in 2009 by
Richard Jenkins in his wing-sailed asymmetric vehicle Greenbird. “In doing our research and digging deeper and deeper into the intricacies of the design challenges, it became very apparent that Richard really did an incredible job with his world record design,” said Ashby.
“As a team we explored some pretty creative and innovative conceptual ideas in the quest for more speed, however in the end our design and performance principles evolved into a concept reasonably similar in basic layout to the existing record holder, which really emphasised to us what a huge challenge this will be.” Clearly the project has multiple gains – keeping key design and technical members of the team engaged during the ‘off season’, as well as giving a platform to explore new technical issues involving high speed, low-drag wind-powered craft, which may offer transferable knowledge to the next generation of AC75S.
Emirates Team New Zealand Principal Matteo de Nora, who is a key supporter of the record attempt, cited the fact that several challengers now have close ties with motorsport teams. “We are seeing some very close collaborations now where the design is crossing into Formula 1 territory, with Ineos Britannia and Mercedes and Alinghi and Red
Bull Racing for a start. This isn’t a coincidence and is focused on the top line speeds and lessons that can be learned the faster you can go. So, this project will be beneficial in continuing to evolve and learn so much more in the aerodynamic realm which was a significant factor in AC36.”
From a design and engineering perspective, Guillaume Verdier explained:
“This project is a really compelling one for all of us involved. There are a lot of similarities to what we do with fast sail boats in terms of the aerodynamics and structural forces, construction methods, materials etc, so we are well placed in many respects. But without doubt, no boat we ever design will go anywhere near as fast as we need our land yacht to go.”
The craft is under construction at the Emirates Team New Zealand build facility in Auckland, and is scheduled for completion in late March. After that it will be shipped to the record attempt location on Western Australia’s salt flats from
July for testing ahead of an attempt at the World Record speed run.