Early next year an all-British team, complete with lady driver, will make an attempt on a world land speed record that has remained unbroken for 100 years. Jesse Crosse reports on how they are facing up to the pressures
In the spring of next year a small team of British record breakers will decamp to the Verneuk Pan, a lake bed in South Africa's Northern Cape. Their equipment will include the usual paraphernalia: toolkits, laptop computers, timing gear, safety equipment and, of course, the car - a sleek missile on wheels finished in British Racing Green.
Steam powered car
Green machine: the sleek, British Steam Car Challenge vehicle
The fuel will be quite unusual, however. Instead of petrol, diesel or aviation spirit, the team will carry only bottles of camping gas and a large quantity of water. With this curious mixture, they aim to set a new world land speed record for steam-powered vehicles of 200mph.
Land speed records rarely last for more than a decade or so before a new challenger emerges. But, officially, a steam-powered car has yet to better the record set at 127.659mph by Fred Marriot's Stanley Steamer in 1906. Running at Ormond (now Daytona) Beach in Florida, Marriot not only took the outright land speed record but dispatched two petrol-powered Fiats and a Napier into the bargain. Much later, in 1985, Bob Barber managed 145.607mph on one run before his steam-powered car was destroyed by fire. But to qualify for a land speed record, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), world motorsport's governing body, requires an average of two runs in opposite directions.
The British Steam Car Challenge has been seven years in the making and was established when Lord Montagu of Beaulieu was invited to see a project undertaken by students at Southampton University, outlining a steam-powered record car. His nephew, Charles Burnett III, was inspired and a team of experts assembled. The car, christened "Inspiration", was designed by Dr Glynne Bowsher, whose list of credits includes being mechanical director on Thrust SSC, current holder of the outright land speed record (763.035mph).
In keeping with all great British record attempts, the project is being run on a shoestring and the emphasis on ingenuity is high. The workshop is a neatly converted barn on Burnett's Hampshire estate and the engine test cell is a modified shipping container.
Consulting engineer and motorsport veteran, Frank Swanston has been charged with delivering a completed challenger. "There is no official British record, so whatever speed we achieve during tests at Bruntingthorpe airfield in Leicestershire early next year will stand," he says. "Next, we want to set a world land speed record of 200mph in South Africa, then follow that in August by breaking Barber's American national record during Bonneville Speed Week, at 150mph."
Mechanically, the Inspiration is a far cry from those early 20th-century puffing billies. The engine is a 320bhp steam turbine that can deliver 270lb ft of torque (equivalent to a BMW M3) from standstill. It will be powered by four monotube boilers fired by liquid petroleum gas, the statistics of which make alarming reading. Water is fed to the boilers from pressurised tanks at a rate of 40 litres a minute. By the time it arrives at the turbines, has been transformed into superheated steam racing through the pipes at 1,000 metres a second.
Between them, these high-tech boilers should produce a formidable four megawatts of energy, which, in electrical terms, would be enough to power about a house for a day. It all sounds rather risky, but Swanston thinks not. "On paper it might look dangerous," he says, "but in practice the boilers are protected by sensors and safety valves and the water tanks have been tested to destruction at around three times the operating pressure."
The car carries enough water to run for four minutes and, once fired up, will be fed on the start line by a mobile tank holding a ton of water; a sophisticated electronic throttle system will prevent an adrenaline-charged driver from accidentally launching the car while it is still connected. When it does go, the combined blast of burners, hiss of superheated steam and scream of the turbine spinning at 12,500rpm will be deafening.
Despite the, er, pressures, a healthy sense of humour prevails. One senior engineer explained the science behind the on-board computer systems, then proved the point with a hefty and unscientific kick aimed at the main control unit. We moved to a white board covered in scientific formulae.
In fact, the scribbles proved the car could reach a terminal velocity of 180mph if pushed from a cliff top. "Mathematically, it's absolutely correct," the engineer confided. "But for some reason, the drivers aren't impressed."
The last sentance makes the whole thing
Matt
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