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Tuesday, January 30, 2007

 

Richard Hammond jet-powered dragster crash

This is the footage of that presenter from Top Gear crashing a jet powered car whilst it’s moving quite pretty quickly. He seems reasonably okay.

(6.6meg Windows media)





2 Responses to “Richard Hammond jet-powered dragster crash”

  1. Kareth Says:

    He was doing 288mph at the time the tyre blew out. The same car holds the current British land speed record at 300.3 mph and is (was) theoretically capable of 370mph – Richard’s previous run had been measured at 314 mph (there’s some debate about whether or not they were actually trying a record attempt). The car uses the same jet engine as the “Red Arrows” Hawk aircraft and develops 10,000 horsepower with the afterburner on (which it was, hence the sheet of flame coming from the engine on this run). If you watch the right-hand front tyre, you can see it start to delaminate before it actually lets go.

    “Quite fast”? Jeez, you’re a hard bloke to impress.

  2. moonbuggy Says:

    Hiya Kareth. 🙂

    You have a point. I will upgrade it from “quite quickly” to “pretty quickly”. 🙂

    It’s pretty crazy though. Not much you can do at that speed when a tire blows, really. The car that broke the sound barrier had solid aluminum wheels, no tires or anything. Presumably in part to avoid problems like Richard had.

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