NASCAR podcast: 2027 Clash heads to Daytona International Speedway
Despite NASCAR’s off week, there’s always plenty to talk about. The guys break down the Clash’s Daytona return, the Chase bubble and the Cup schedule.
- Former RAF pilot Andy Green is attempting to set a new land-speed record for hydrogen-powered vehicles.
- The record attempt is sponsored by construction equipment company JCB to showcase modern hydrogen fuel technology.
The Fastest Man on Earth is slowing down in order to rush us into an enhanced future.
It’s all relative, they say, and in this case, you must come to grips with 351 miles per hour registering as “slowing down.”
“It’s been an interesting journey and I’m hugely enjoying it,” Andy Green said by phone midweek from Northwest Utah, where the annual Speed Week is under way at the famed Bonneville Salt Flats.
It was 29 years ago when Green, the former fighter-jet pilot in the UK’s Royal Air Force, became the first Earth-bound person to go supersonic, surpassing the speed of sound and reaching 763 mph. Next Wednesday, Aug. 12, the goal is 351 mph, which by comparison sounds like a milk-and-bread run, but it will also be a record because at Bonneville’s annual carnival of speed, again, it’s all relative.
In this case, it’d be a record for hydrogen-powered machinery.
Green was a natural choice for England-based JCB, a giant in the heavy-construction equipment world. JCB is expanding into the U.S. with a massive plant in, where else, Texas. Deciding against a casual arrival, JCB is instead going Full Texan and basically saying, “Hey, y’all, watch this!”
This involves setting a new land-speed record utilizing internal combustion fueled by hydrogen. If Green hits 351 mph, he’ll be going one click higher than he did 20 years ago when JCB hired him to set the diesel-powered record.
Hydrogen’s long-ago history wasn’t pretty
As happens in all forms of motorsports, there’s a marketing factor involved. A big one, in this case, and in a pleasant twist, it’s not just about selling soda or auto parts, but potentially the future of automation.
JCB has invested heavily in hydrogen and is banking on it powering heavy equipment and, who knows, maybe more. Next week’s splashy speed trial is a way of bringing attention to the possibilities. Yes, hydrogen technology has come a long way.
“I spent a career in aviation, flying jet fighters for the RAF,” Green says. “As a military veteran, looking back, aviation and hydrogen have not had a good history.”
Anyone ever hear of the Hindenburg? That’s the most famous hydrogen disaster, but there were others involving conventional military airplanes.
“So when they first told me about it, I said, ‘Are you sure about this?’” he continues. “But as soon as they started talking about modern technology, I realized everything I knew about hydrogen was mostly 100 years old. Even the more modern stuff — 20, 30 years ago — hydrogen was still difficult to handle.
“But nowadays, you can buy off-the-shelf, high-pressure tanks, high-pressure valves, etc. — all of these things have been developed and are used commercially, and in JCB’s case, they’re already in use in some of the harshest environments in the world. I learned that everything I knew about hydrogen was out of date.”
What remains from earlier times, however, are throttles and steering wheels, and come next Wednesday, many basics of automation and physics will come into play when Green tucks into the 32-foot long, 3-foot wide JCB Hydromax, complete with a pair of 800-horse engines mounted sideways on a pencil-shaped speedster weighing 5,500 pounds — “each engine weighs over 1,000 pounds,” Green says.
The plan is to outrun his 20-year-old record for internally combusted engines, originally set in the JCB Dieselmax. A test run Monday tickled 300 mph, and here’s the good news: “It was just wanting to go faster,” Green says.
After accepting the driving offer last year, Green was sent to England’s famed Silverstone track for a battery of “unpleasant testing” to make sure his hand-eye coordination and general reflexes were suitable for all that happens and might happen inside a tight cockpit at high speeds. A man who logged countless hours in a jet fighter would be expected to sail through, but again, he’s not a young man anymore.
“Fortunately,” he says, “it turns out I’ve aged reasonably well.”
Andy Green will face old physical foes inside the cockpit
Good thing he’s a young 64, because things happen during acceleration and deceleration, particularly when the parachute fires. “Spatial disorientation,” they call it, when the inner ears and eyeballs are in disagreement about what they’re feeling and seeing.
During acceleration, there’s the feeling of lifting off the ground, although the four wheels are snugly hugging the salt flat. That’s bad but can be managed with proper training.
On the opposite side of the run, when things should be returning to normal, they can actually get worse as the opposite sensation takes over. Former land-speed jockey Richard Noble, whose records Green broke nearly 30 years ago, described the diving sensation — somatogravic deceleration — in stark but simple terms.
“The whole world twists and you are absolutely convinced you are going straight down into the center of the Earth,” he said.
You might get a tiny taste of it if you have to climb hard onto your brakes on the highway, however, “when it starts happening for 30 or 40 seconds at a time,” Green says, “it starts to mess with your brain.”
“All of that in a very small, cramped cockpit,” Green adds. “You’re strapped in very tightly, race suit, hugely hot, the acceleration, the deceleration, a lot of vibration, two big engines mounted to a steel chassis, a lot of noise …. Aside from all that, it’s pretty easy.”
If all goes well, a future generation might look back and consider this year’s Bonneville Speed Week one of the first big steps toward an automotive world powered by relatively simplistic and 100-percent carbon-free hydrogen.
“A lot of places in the world don’t have oil and gas,” Green says. “But if you have sunshine and water, you can make your own fuel in your backyard.
“Now, it’s not quite that simple, but the technology is getting there where basically you can set up your own hydrogen manufacturing station — and a lot of people have — and when that technology spreads, you become independent of the need to dig fossil fuels out of the ground. You can make your own clean fuel wherever you are in the world.”
Sure, the scolds will likely find something else to yell at us about, but let’s cross that bridge if and when it comes. On the way to that possible solution, one of the first mileposts passed will come next week on a famous desert of salt.
“It’s a fascinating innovation by JCB,” Green says. “The fact they’ve come to Bonneville to show off their technology, it’s a brave thing for a company to do, and they have built one helluva race car.
“It’s an adventure with the technology of the future, and in the next few days, we’re gonna find out just how good this stuff is. It’s gonna be a lot of fun.”
Email Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com
