World’s fastest man on his new hydrogen speed record and his slow personal car

For someone who has never worked in construction, former RAF fighter pilot Andy Green knows a lot about the industry.

“I’m never going to own a JCB digger, but it’s really exciting to showcase this tech to the world,” he says, discussing how he achieved the world land speed record for a hydrogen-powered vehicle. JCB is one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of heavy construction equipment.

To be clear, he was not driving a digger. The mark he set in August was the fastest speed – 653 kilometres an hour – ever recorded in a hydrogen-powered vehicle. The vehicle was a sunshine-yellow speed machine powered by two hydrogen internal combustion engines with a combined 1,600 brake horsepower – a massive display of raw engine power.

“The JCB Hydromax record was about demonstrating the zero-carbon tech of the future,” Green says. “If you’ve got sunshine and water, you can make your own fuel,” he adds, referencing how green hydrogen is produced.

However, less than 1 per cent of worldwide hydrogen production is green. Most hydrogen production methods still release carbon dioxide.

Still, the process is possible. Green says his team’s accomplishment would be “hugely attractive” to the construction industry because companies could harness the benefits of an internal combustion engine to run trucks and heavy equipment without the need for massive batteries or figuring out how to constantly charge them.

Of course, the best preparation for his land speed record was likely his former career as a fighter pilot for Britain’s Royal Air Force, a role that involved many transferable skills.

“Probably the most important ones relate to control, speed and planning, working on a second-by-second basis and thinking, ‘Is this what I’m expecting, do I need to react or change something, or do I need to carry on into the next second?’” he says.

Green is certainly no stranger to speed. In 1997, he set the outright world land speed record in the ThrustSSC, going 1,227 kilometres an hour on a dry lakebed in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.

Green recalls during his record run, it wasn’t the speed pushing him out of his comfort zone, but the searing heat.

Because of the risk of fire and how long it would take the vehicle to slow down, he wore “four times the level of thermal protection worn by an F1 driver.” This gave him 20 seconds of protection, compared to the five seconds standard in Formula One.

You can forget any thoughts of a cool breeze flowing through the window. The ThrustSSC featured only a single, tiny, reinforced windscreen designed to withstand extreme aerodynamic pressures.

“It was phenomenally hot at Black Rock Desert, even in the shade,” Green says. “And when it was 40 Celsius in the shade, the cockpit temperatures were hovering between 50 and 60.”

To prepare, Green’s training regime involved many hot baths – though not the soothing, lavender-scented variety.

“You can’t switch your panic reactions off, but you can turn them down when they occur due to your core temperature rising rapidly inside the cockpit,” he says. “Soaking in hot water twice a day was a really simple, effective method of doing that. I’d fill the bath with water as hot as I could stand it. After 20 minutes, I’d be lobster red and dripping with sweat.”

In the car, he says the acceleration is intense, likening it to the feeling of an airplane taking off, but lasting much longer. Once he passes the sound barrier – still the only car to ever do so – the ride becomes quiet, although he has too much to think about for fear to creep in.

“As a spectator, you’d hear the sonic boom, but inside the car, it didn’t feel any different. I’m concentrating on car control, working to keep the car straight and controlling the speed to within eight kilometres an hour of the agreed target for that run,” he says.

But Green is also keen to point out that none of his records have been one-man jobs.

“Cars don’t build and run themselves, and when I attempted my land speed record in the ThrustSSC, I absolutely loved getting together with a world-class team to solve a problem and doing something which people said was impossible – could you get a land vehicle, which meets the FIA definition of an automobile, and could you go faster than the speed of sound?”

That history of teamwork set the stage for his next chapters. The connection with JCB was forged in 2006, when Green set the diesel land speed record, reaching 563 kilometres an hour in a JCB Dieselmax car. Years later, JCB got back in touch with him.

“JCB called me and asked if I would like to help with a new land speed record they were considering,” he says. “Three months later, we were having our first engineering planning meeting for the JCB Hydromax project.

“I’m also monitoring systems such as the electrics and hydraulics to make sure it’s safe to keep accelerating,” he adds, noting that his motivation remains a determination to inspire others and explore the potential of new technologies. Green says he’s never been motivated by a need for speed.

Proof of which, perhaps, is his personal car – a 1904 Stanley Steam Car.

“It’s the best way to go to the pub,” he says. “Everybody stops and waves, and people come up and want to talk about it. In 1904, internal combustion engine and carburetor technologies were very basic, but steam was very advanced at the time, and it’s a car which brings history to life.”

Its top speed? Just 96 kilometres an hour. There’s no need to prepare in hot baths to take that for a spin.