December was a tough month: we had a bout of flu at G-Force which decimated the workforce - and I pushed off for a few days break! Just as we were trying to get on a much delayed flight, my mobile rang in the middle of Heathrow Terminal 2. It was the sponsorship deal we had been fighting for months - 'Richard we have made the decision - we want to talk to you!'

I explained that there were options, I could discontinue the holiday right now and be with them in a few hours - but there was a real chance of serious personal injury from my wife Sally, who puts up with a high risk lifestyle and tends to take holidays rather seriously. 'OK come and see us after Christmas - we promise not to sponsor anything else'

It was Margaret Thatcher who wrote that its always easy to start something but it requires a special determination to finish. This is exactly where we are; we have to finish ThrustSSC properly before early summer to be in with any kind of chance of beating Breedlove. We held the usual Saturday team meeting at Fontwell on Saturday 6th - Andy Green has got wise to these meetings, he and Jayne can be seen at the Happy Eater Restaurant filling up on a mammoth breakfast before the marathon. True to form the meeting started at 10.00am and finished at 5pm. It ran really well - we attacked all the impossibly difficult issues and came up with well argued and viable solutions and a great plan which everyone bought. The team is beginning to pull really strongly and doesn't seem to be phased by the sheer magnitude of what we are taking on. Andy had the minutes out in 24 hours and Jerry the bar charts before we left G-Force. ThrustSSC is still in many pieces but at long last most of the subcontract work is nearly through - this means that the problems are ours alone and not left with third parties who sometimes don't share our determination and deadlines.

The huge composite patterns had been delivered from Survirn a few days before. In order to save time and cost we had pioneered a new method, making the patterns from MDF Caberboard and then cutting them on Survirn's 5-axis machines. Survirn had taken the brunt of this cutting these huge patterns all December and it made a tremendous contribution to the project. God knows what its done to Survirns production schedules - but Norman Kench and Dave Houghton fought it through - and you can read about it all in one of the December issues of Flight Magazine. Mike Horne has now got to get the patterns sanded down and the tools made-against the clock-its a huge and daunting task but Mike, who always seems to be riding the critical path with his huge bodywork programme, just says 'We've just bloody got to do it, Richard'.

December also brought out some different problems. Craig Breedlove is going to run The Spirit at Edwards Air Force Base in May. This means that he is going to be able to use the Shuttle Runway and run to high speeds. If we don't run on a desert before Black Rock, then with only UK runway experience we are going to appear like rookies as we try to tame ThrustSSC on the desert - its like driving on ice. The only minor problem is unlike Breedlove who has Black Rock 7 hours up the road, we have chosen the wrong desertless place in which to be born! Andrew Noble, my younger brother, used to drive the Thrust 2 transporter and knows all about deserts. During October he was in the US checking the size and bearing strength of every US and Mexican desert we could find. I phoned him up in France - we've got to get to Africa! Andrew took it well - grabbed the famous desert penetrometer (for measuring surface bearing strength) and disappeared to South Africa care of Alliance Airlines, Hertz and our friends in Castrol South Africa. The results were very good but we have a few more deserts to research before we can make a decision. It's got to be the right one - the wrong choice of desert could fail the whole project.

Back at Fontwell, it's James who has the unenviable task of pulling the completion of the car together. We have to keep the money flowing, the PR running and find new sponsors - but it's James who has to pull the whole thing together masterminding both the detail design and the project management - and somehow keeping up the pressure when lesser people would have thrown up their hands, blown fuses or demanded secretaries or deputies. Within 48 hours of the meeting James has the entire workforce rescheduled, the work costed and is recruiting new staff - generally around 10pm. His figures reach me in London - and once again I think 'How in God's name are we going to achieve that!' But I'm getting used to that - we've done it before and we'll have to do it again!

Shortly after the meeting, Jerry Bliss and I sit down at yet another Happy Eater - this time it's in Essex not far from Ford's R&D site at Dunton where Jerry works as a Systems Engineer. Ford has expressed an initial interest in the project and a willingness to help but the friendly giant simply can't respond to the very tough and fast moving demands of this project. Jerry is one of life's really great characters and somehow manages to keep his sense of humour and fun when managing the huge ThrustSSC systems responsibility. As Ron says 'the car is a research vehicle before it is a record breaker': to be sure of knowing what we are doing, the car has 140+ data channels and an active ride driven off the engine hydraulics. All this mass of wiring and systems is Jerry's World. No more driving dangerously into the Blue - like we did with Thrust2!

Jerry thought over the problem, we discussed the project prospects and then he just said: 'I am going for it - I'm leaving Ford - right now!' And he did!

In November Robin Richardson finally cracked the internet team problem - Nick Chapman, a Mach 1 Gold member who works for British Gas had written in with a generous offer of help. Robin had brought Nick together with Jeremy Davey from Texas Instruments and Graham Loader from Digital. It was quite clear from the start of the first meeting that we had one hell of an Internet Team and they immediately set a tremendous target - to rewrite and restructure the whole net site in one month. When you realise that there is over 15 megs on the Thrust site together with all the complex linkages, it is a huge task. It took a tremendous effort to achieve the objective, but the result speaks for itself and the site is far more comprehendable and easier to navigate. It's growing strongly at around 30,000 accesses/week!

Rolls-Royce are really getting into the swing of things - calling meetings and providing not just engine support but real engine leadership. Towards the end of the month, we are giving a presentation on the project to the entire Bristol workforce - it will be a real pleasure because like us they work in small, very highly motivated teams and they understand what we are up against. This is going to be a really good sponsorship!

In the middle of this we have lost Andy for a week or two - he's back on his favourite patch of ice - the Cresta Run, where he is instructing for the RAF Team. We've told him not to bother to come back if he breaks anything!

January promises to be a truly frightful month - another one! We've got a great deal of money to make and in the middle of the month Andrew and I have another desert to visit. The production objectives are prodigious, Jerry's objectives are horrendous and we can't afford to slip - anywhere!

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