The Water Speed Record – Part one

How dangerous?

‘It’s a huge risk,’ says Richard Noble OBE, entrepreneur and holder of the Land Speed Record (LSR) between 1983 and 1997. He’s talking at the Brooklands Museum (itself no stranger to record breaking) to members in the packed hall about his latest record attempt.

Don’t go thinking this is just Noble putting the band back together to have a pop at the 763.035mph through-the-sound-barrier record set by Andy Green OBE, driving ThrustSSC in a series of opposite-lock slides across the Black Rock Desert on 15 October 1997.

Oh no, this is far, far riskier. In fact, one member of the Brooklands audience has already asked Green (who is in attendance and is an accomplished yachtsman as well as a fighter pilot, and, if appearances are correct, still brimming with the right stuff), if he would be mad enough to sit in the pointed end of Noble’s latest project.

The reply is unambiguous. ‘No’.