THE mastermind behind a car set to smash all land speed records is still searching for the perfect driver for the world's most dangerous job.
Engineer Stuart Edmondson designed the Bloodhound - a car and rocket ship hybrid with 150 times more power than the machines used in F1.
Powered by a EuroFighter jet engine with three Nammo rockets, it covers a whole mile in only 3.6seconds when it goes at top speed but the Bloodhound’s potential is so much more.
The latest data shows the car should be able to soar past 800mph and hopefully reach 850mph pretty comfortably.
Some are even hoping to go a touch above 850mph if the conditions and drive are perfect on the big day with a hopeful yet mesmerising 1,000mph target in mind soon if the Bloodhound can’t already hit that in South Africa.
Stuart is now on the hunt for a new driver to take the wheel on the ambitious project he has personally helped take from an idea to reality.
He’s looking for someone who can come in and pilot the car with confidence and be raring to go and make history.
Stuart spoke about why he needs to find the perfect driver who's willing to make history, take risks and loves the thought of being in a high-pressure situation seeking out unimaginable thrills.
He told The Sun: “I need someone who’s lived and breathed that high-pressured environment.
“The perfect driver needs to be someone who can operate in a high-speed environment – so that could be in a fast car or a motorcyclist or even a pilot.
"But really it's someone who’s been in that high-pressure, high-tempo environment and who won’t crumble when they’re under pressure.
“They must understand the training and preparation you need to go through to handle it."
Former driver Andy Green – who currently holds the land speed record - sat in the car for all the test runs and still be a part of the project but is set to mentor the new driver and take them through strict tests so they’re ready to smash past 800mph.
Obviously finding someone who’s driven at supersonic speeds before isn’t required as only one person has ever done that before and it’s Andy.
But the new driver does need experience in being a big name or at least be able to bring in a captivated audience so the project can continue to be funded and finally completed.
Stuart has appealed for anyone who might fancy a quick drive to get in touch with him and the team but especially thrill seekers.
“The danger is attractive to a lot of people and we’ve had lots of applications and I think it’s exciting because of the danger and the challenge like people get with skydiving and things like that,” Stuart added.
He also made it very clear in recent weeks that he’s hopeful Netflix or Amazon Prime might get excited by the idea of following someone who’s never driven at these speeds before and start to film the build-up to the record-breaking drive.
Although he does note that a celebrity could also do the trick and he’d happily talk to an ex F1 driver or another famous motorist as they could be the key to securing the extra funding.
The Bloodhound might not look like a car at first glance with its powerful rockets and complex shape and features but it certainly operates as one.
According to the governing body of motor vehicles - the FIA – a car is anything that has four wheels in constant contact with the ground at all times.
Stuart said: “This regulation makes it very much more difficult as going supersonic that close to ground is a lot harder than in the air like a jet would for example.
“The easiest way to explain it is that the front of the car is like a Formula One car, the rear is more like a fighter jet with jet engines, but ultimately by definition, it is a car, four wheels on the ground, steered by a human being.”
Most of the previous record-breaking attempts have been done in the US but with the climate dramatically changing over recent times it just wasn’t possible anymore to do it on American soil.
The Kalahari Desert in South Africa was the next place on the list for Stuart and his expert team.
This is because of the regular flooding on the planes of the Northern Cape that soften the ground up slightly and keep it at a perfect state for a ridiculously fast and powerful motor to glide across the desert.
Another key factor is having enough space so it can reach its top speed and stop all within miles of each other.
This meant a massive empty space in the middle of a basically unused desert was the perfect spot for a team of mavericks to go and break the land speed record once again.
Stuart told us that he picked the spot as “there are very few places on the planet that give us the perfect smooth, long, flat piece of land that we can do the runs on".
The former Air Force engineer was asked to help design the car after spending almost two decades in the military.
He was tasked with ensuring the car's overall safety but the idea fascinated him so much that he’s now been given a lead role in the exciting operation.
They first tested the Bloodhound in Newquay airport in 2017 using the runway and starting off at a moderate 200mph.
Two years later, they jumped into high-speed testing in South Africa to “validate their modelling” and make sure they were ready to hit literal supersonic speeds.
Hitting a top speed of 628mph the car drove beautifully across the South African strip just as planned.
The next time they head off back to the desert will be the day they go for the record.
Stuart said that the biggest area helping to make the car so quick is “the advancement of modern technology” and “supercomputers”.
The record-breaking speed to beat is 763mph and was set by Andy Green in 1997 when his Thrust supersonic car hit the staggering speed in the Nevada desert.
That record didn’t have the luxury of computers and car modelling to perfect the motor and ensure it was truly as fast as it possibly could be.
With just two proper tests being done – both at incredibly lower speeds than the real event – questions still lingered over how the Bloodhound team could be sure on the safety and overall success of the project.
Stuart knows the potential dangers of going supersonic but says the team has everything studied and under control: “The biggest challenge we have is ensuring that the car runs safely but this is also about pushing engineering limits.
“The aerodynamics is the biggie as you need to keep the car stable to stop it going airborne and stop it snowploughing when its nose goes up and down.
“Then it comes down to how it might roll, if it flips over or goes sideways but all of these things have been addressed by looking at the shape of the car, so the aerodynamics and adding things in to keep the driver safe."
One of these safety tools is the big fin of the back of the car that should prevent it from flipping over at high speeds and destroying the car and the driver inside if there is a catastrophic issue.
Similar to an F1 car, the fin acts as a stopper so when it hits the ground it keeps the body of the car from smashing into the ground and crumbling under the intense speed and heavy force.
Stuart continued: "It’s really funny watching this car go just 50mph on its first run as that’s so slow but then every time you increment higher you download more data as the car’s covered in sensors and you sit down for hours with this data and you start to see things.
"If you’ve got any deviation, if the car’s beginning to lift up or roll left, how is it when it goes over bumps and if the suspension helps to smooth it out on the desert floor so the feedback loop is vitally important for us."
Many of the safety concerns come from previous world record attempts where the cars couldn’t cope with the dangerous nature of going that fast and ultimately failed in brutal circumstances.
Stuart remembers the failed attempts: “If you go back 30, 40, 50 years ago land speed record cars used to just crash as they had no data and there were no computers or feedback and the cars would just go unstable and crash but we’re in a different place now so we know how to ensure safety.”
Reaching 800mph safely might be the biggest thing for the Bloodhound team but they then have to think about how to bring the car to a complete stop.
Stuart noted: “It’s easy going fast, you just put a big rocket engine on the car and off you go, stopping is the real challenge because as soon as you reach your top speed you need to start slowing down really.
The drag system in place helps to dramatically slow the Bloodhound as the whopping amount of force being put through the car to make it go fast also ends up counteracting when it stops, meaning that the same amount of force ends up helping to reduce the speed a lot.
But this isn’t enough to bring the car down to normal speeds as two other factors are also in play that your standard road car certainly doesn’t have.
“We’ve got air brakes that come out and push against the air to slow the car down and also a parachute system that does a great job at bringing it down to a lower speed where the regular brakes you’d see in an everyday car start to work as you’d expect,” Stuart revealed.
One of the biggest issues in testing though actually came from dust.
To many people’s surprise, the dust that gets kicked up when travelling at high speeds in the desert can do some nasty damage to the car that’s been built to perfection so any damage can affect its performance.
Even though the car didn’t push to speeds that were wildly out of control Stuart and the bloodhound still saw the effects of the desert in testing.
He said: “Even though the car didn’t end up going at supersonic speeds during testing some of the air flow around the car did and that’s normal as we are in the transonic region where you’re close to being supersonic.
“The forces on the airflow that’s gone transonic can be huge and we’ve certainly learnt some things on those areas that need strengthening as the dust caused some damage to the bottom of the car so lessons learnt.”
For Stuart the chance to break one of the world’s most prestigious records means more than just a certificate of his hard work.
He said: “The last record was done in 1997 and there were a lot of people who haven’t ever seen that still as it wasn’t in the digital age on your phones but if we go out to the desert and do this, billions of people will be able to watch it live and just get so engrossed in it and be so good for the country.”
“It can get Britain back on the map in terms of doing crazy things like we’ve done in the past and showing that Britain is still a capable country with things like this.”
