“We were covering one and a half football fields each second, so I needed to keep my eyes on the road,” Webb recalls, wryly. At that point, though, he really had to concentrate. The last time Webb had glanced at the speedometer, he was hammering along at 310 mph, and the supremely aerodynamic machine was still accelerating hard. In fact, it was bigger than Webb thought-and far bigger than what the team itself had expected. But at those speeds, a puff of wind that wouldn’t lift a paper umbrella from a piña colada on the Vegas Strip could send any hypercar spinning into the desert scrub, with potentially deadly results.īut the driver looked up at him and cracked a smile: “I saw a big number on the display.” Last year, Bugatti set an unofficial record of 304 mph with an enhanced version of the Chiron, and SSC wanted to beat that too. Shelby assumed the wind had ruined the October 10 attempt to break the current production-car speed record of 277.9 mph, set by a Koenigsegg Agera RS in 2017 on the same 7-mile stretch of Nevada State Route 160 near Las Vegas. His first baby is due soon, and he was all emotion.” “During the drive a blast of wind had knocked him completely over to the side of the road, onto the rumble strips. I’m never doing this again,’” says Shelby. ![]() “He looked at me and said, ‘Jared, I’m done. ![]() When SSC North America boss Jerod Shelby reached race driver Oliver Webb after Webb attempted to set a speed record in the company’s new 1,750-horsepower SSC Tuatara, the 29-year-old Brit was sitting on the ground with his head in his hands.
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