Being asked to set a Land Speed Record with a couple of ‘digger’ engines still ranks as one of the stranger requests I’ve had in my life
The main job of the race (or in this case ‘run’) engineer is to be the link between the driver and the team and optimise the speed of the car
At its heart, motorsport is a simple sport. Go fast, don’t crash until you see the chequered flag. Whether that’s at the end of a prescribed distance or time, if you reach it first, or in the quickest time, then it’s job done.
With the exception of one year of my motorsport life, these rules applied. That year was spent setting the diesel Land Speed Record [LSR]. The thought of the chequered flag never entered my head until the final day we set our target record, but then nobody was there to say the job was officially over, nobody to wave that flag.
We could then potentially go out the following day and go quicker still. As it turned out, that was to become the hardest decision of all to make.
To explain how this all came about, we must go back to 2006. I was working in the paddock at Oulton Park in March of that year when I received a ’phone call.
I’ve had quite a few memorable moments at that particular track in Cheshire, UK. As a school kid in the early 1960s, I’d met and talked to my hero, Jim Clark, there. My father was at school in Duns, Jim’s hometown, so there was a connection, and we all chatted happily as
