R. M. CLARKE
The land speed record. Motorsport distilled to its most fundamental elements - Distance versus Time. There is something intensely appealing about that, for it is the pure essence of speed and little else. There is none of the visceral, adrenaline-pumping thrill of Grand Prix racing about land speed record breaking. Indeed, it is ironic that in a branch of the sport where speeds are astronomically higher than they are in Formula One, there is none of the glamour and the glitz one associates with the 16-ring circus. Instead, the speed seeker all too frequently finds himself and his dedicated team miles from anywhere, in some of the most inhospitable (yet breathtakingly beautiful) parts of the globe. He will spend his time waiting for nature to be benign, eyeing the curvature of the earth, fighting the ennui of isolation and hoping like hell that it isn't going to rain. It is a cold-blooded affair that requires a special kind of courage and determination. To me it has always been an ultimate test, a peculiar measure of an individual, an unusual means of judging the worth of his claim to heroic status even though, almost to a man, such self-aggrandisement is never part of their personal thinking. I don't think I've met a speedking yet who wasn't a reluctant hero. My personal fascination with the land speed record was fired even before my passion for Grand Prix racing, in the days long before I graduated to secondary school. And I give a nod of thanks to the gods of fate that I have been fortunate enough in my professional life to meet many of the people concerned intimately with record breaking, and on two occasions to have been present when Britain pushed the barriers forward. Some speak with awe of the total eclipse of the sun, but there is no sight I have encountered more impressive than that of ThrustSSC charging like a big black locomotive down the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, chased by a roostertail of dust, outrunning its own noise. Nor any sound more emotionally charging than the two sonic booms that took Andy Green and Richard Noble into the history books. As people are wont to say of events that somehow change the world, you had to be there to appreciate it. The sheer splendour and beauty of if all. And was it ever thus. Throughout LSR history, men have savoured such pivotal moments as they have waged war on speed on public roads, racetracks, frozen lakes, beaches, salt flats and alkali playas. Long may they continue their quest. The period covered in this first volume of Brooklands Books Land Speed Record series reflects the true pioneering grit of the men who first sought the ultimate, for these were the days when nothing could be taken for granted, when no one power source could claim supremacy. The early contest between Count Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat and his Jeantaud, and the inimitable Camille Jenatzy and the gloriously named Jamais Contente, captures the essential spirit of record breaking, the daring and audacity to go where no-one has stepped before. In their electric hybrids they battled the speed from an initial 39.24 mph in 1898 to 65.79 in a little over four months. Then came Leon Serpollet and steam power, before the petrol engine finally came to the fore. This was an age when so much was being discovered in the realm of technology. Today it is easy to look back with an indulgent smile, cossetted by the acquired knowledge of decades of development, but back then the research was conducted as it always has been in such situations, by men who were prepared not just to dream, but to do something about their dreams. Men whose eyes were focused on distant horizons that others could not always see. Within these pages you will find their stories
