Speed Record Club

speed on wheels, water and wings

Just for the Record - February 2009

contents:
Blind Belgian Breaks Speed Record
Top Gear at Bonneville
Coniston 2008 Records Week Results

Blind Belgian Breaks Speed Record

Belgian Luc Costermans has broken the world blind road speed record, in an airstrip in France. Mr Costermans topped 308.78 km/h (192 mph) while driving a Lamborghini Gallardo supercar at Istres, near Marseille, in southern France. Following his successful attempt, Mr Costermans thanked his co-pilot Guillaume Roman, saying: “I’m very, very happy. It’s a team effort.”

He dedicated his effort to the Formula 1 racing driver Philippe Streiff, who has been a tetraplegic since suffering an accident in a Grand Prix in Brazil in 1989. Mr Costermans, 43, who hit his top speed in two runs in the borrowed car, was blinded in an accident four years ago.

The former record holder was Briton Mike Newman, whose BMW M5 reached 268 km/h three years ago.

Two years ago Mr Costermans completed a tour of France piloting a light aeroplane. He was accompanied by an instructor and a navigator.

Top Gear at Bonneville

Following a thread on landracing.com, I made the observation that the Top Gear Team would not be able to participate at Speed Week in the way they were shown to be driving their cars due to safety fears and the obvious lack of protection visible. This is the response from one of the officials, Wester.

“The original situation was for them to pass the tech inspection for the 130 Club and make runs there to get used to running on salt. We shut down at 6:00 for the day on Friday and ran them on the long course for some higher speed runs after most of the crowd had left the salt. The whole thing was interesting to say the least. Our intent was not to interfere with the normal running and yet to give them runs on the long course with all our safety people still in place. They paid for the extra hour with a credit card.

Obviously the clips moved from the 130 Club course to the long course back to the 130 Club course. Not what actually happened and the B 25 flew over as they were making the last of their runs on the long course. This was a great sight, coming down very low, down the course from Floating Mountain. Those big radial engines sounded great! I still get goosebumps remembering the moment. The look on Monte’s face as he listened to their banter was priceless.”

Coniston 2008 Records Week Results

For a full report and table of results, see FastFacts 72