{"id":600230,"date":"2019-11-07T10:21:10","date_gmt":"2019-11-07T10:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/opinion\/bloodhound-driver-andy-green-500mph-testing-went-fantastically-well"},"modified":"2019-12-03T14:11:17","modified_gmt":"2019-12-03T14:11:17","slug":"bloodhound-driver-andy-green-500mph-testing-went-fantastically-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/articles\/land-speed-records\/bloodhound-driver-andy-green-500mph-testing-went-fantastically-well\/","title":{"rendered":"Bloodhound driver Andy Green: 500mph testing went “fantastically well”"},"content":{"rendered":"

After setting the goal of hitting 500mph, Bloodhound’s land speed record car has already broken that barrier and can go faster still according to pilot Andy Green<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Andy<\/p>\n

The man in the cockpit, RAF fighter pilot Andy Green<\/strong> Photo: Charlie Sperring<\/em><\/p>\n

Less than a year ago, the Bloodhound SSC Land Speed Record project seemed as dead in a ditch as Boris\u2019 plan to take us out of the EU on October 31. The money had run out, the receivers had been appointed but no new buyer found. It was over.<\/p>\n

And yet, yesterday, Wing Commander Andy Green shot across South Africa\u2019s Northern Cape at over 500mph<\/a>. The car was the same albeit repainted, the project the same albeit it renamed Bloodhound LSR. And when he was done and de-briefed, he called me up.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really gone fantastically well,\u201d he says in tones that somehow are true to a man with the heart of an unconquerable enthusiast yet with the cool, analytical brain of the RAF fighter pilot. He is, of course, both. \u201cIf the weather turned and we had to go home tomorrow, we\u2019d still be really happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

And with good reason. From nowhere Bloodhound has risen and achieved in less than a year what the project had not managed in the previous decade: put some tangible, impressive results on the table.<\/p>\n

This stuff really matters. It matters for all sorts of practical reasons: Bloodhound is a bespoke and very complicated prototype that, like all such machines, needs debugging. The team needs to prove that the car behaves in practice in exactly the same way the simulations suggest<\/p>\n

“The rocket fitted over the winter will move the centre of gravity rearward and make the car more unstable, which will actually help”<\/p>\n

They have to find out about a surface upon which no LSR car has ever run before, they have to test parachutes, test the team itself and the myriad responsibilities of its members. And, of course, they have to go bloody fast.<\/p>\n

But it matters most because without those results, the investment that\u2019s going to get this car over the line \u2013 which means a new Land Speed Record and probably cracking 800mph \u2013 simply isn\u2019t going to come.<\/p>\n

The Bloodhound LSR team will rightly judge themselves by what they feel capable of achieving; everyone else will judge them by what they\u2019ve achieved. And before they came to Hakskeenpan, that amounted to one run down the runway of Newquay airport at around 200mph over two years ago.<\/p>\n

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