September had me really worried - we were due to go to Jordan and all the sponsorship deals on which I was relying had gone wrong. How in God's name were we to get to Jordan - and how were we to stay there once we got to Jafr. Ron Dennis from McLaren had called in his bet (that we would never make a record attempt this summer) and I had this awful feeling that we might have to admit defeat and stop.

In the meantime ThrustSSC was starting to run well - on run 12 on the 28th September Andy really got the bit between his teeth and ThrustSSC made the first max reheat run - exhibiting great stability even when the left burner lit before the right, and with a huge noise that seemed to echo around Farnborough. It was one hell of an experience - 10 tonnes of car shifted from 160-190 mph in 1 second!

It was about this time that we had the call from Robin Burton at Ketchum PR: "We have this potential sponsorship for you - it could be a large one - are you interested?"

The meeting was memorable - the would be sponsor had just been bought by IBM and was about to make its global announcement in London - not New York or Tokyo, but London - for the very good reason that they see their business as global.

That meeting had gone well but it wasn’t until the day before press day that I was to meet the Tivoli people. As press day came closer Robin assured me that Tivoli had signed the sponsorship agreement - but with no contract in front of me I had the sinking feeling of having been faced with a similar disaster before. After all there was no contact with the principals - there had been little in the way of negotiation and I had a very competent PR director in effect saying "Trust me Richard - it’ll be alright!". This, as any good businessman will tell you, is the moment before the moment when it all turns to ashes!

Things brightened up with the arrival of the signed contract and suddenly there was money in the account - the first tranche had been paid.

On the Sunday I was due to meet the new sponsors - when I got a call from Sally - they had already taken a train to Farnborough to see the car and meet the team - which to all intents and purposes had gone down extremely well. The entire team had met the new sponsors except me - and I was the one supposed to know all about them! I made it to their pre-launch run-through in London on the Sunday - and there really was a magic moment. Frank Moss, Scott Harman and Bill Watson were deeply sold on the project and I found myself talking with people who really understood what we were going through and who see themselves as very active partners.

It's difficult to express the feelings - but after years of this hassle and struggle of pushing water uphill we found ourselves among very genuine friends who are absolutely as determined as we are - and who have the financial muscle to give us the help we needed. This was the shot in the arm at the crucial moment - a moment which had taken 4.5 years to reach.

Next on the agenda was the press day - we had a long hard think and then shot for the 14th for the press day and the 26th for departure to Jafr. The press day was a triumph for the ThrustSSC media machine which now has some 800 journalists following the project - all using the Internet as a live press pack. The tension was very high over the weekend before - and it reached a peak when the ThrustSSC hydraulic reservoir blew with a huge bang that echoed around Q Shed. Everyone was very tired and a simple mistake had been made with the purging system which resulted in a hydraulic explosion and the a seriously damaged reservoir. Jerry Bliss was on his way to GForce within minutes and the rebuilt reservoir appeared the next day. But there was another problem of a very different nature - Castrol had imported another 200 litres of the special ASF hydraulic suspension fluid - and the drum was in the US awaiting shipment. The last of our own stock was on the hangar floor and pouring out of ThrustSSC. Nothing as simple as this appears to daunt Castrol - they rallied around and made new ASF stock for us at their research labs at Pangbourne. The pressure on everyone was intense and most people didn’t sleep. Roger McCann, our branding expert, was dashing all over UK collecting long forgotten logos and attaching them to ThrustSSC - he never seemed to sleep either. It wasn’t until press day morning that we could run the car again - this time with the tailplane in place for the first time. I arrived at 8.00am to see ThrustSSC hurtle down the runway with a huge noise - and as it disappeared behind the trees I wondered if it was ever going to stop.

"ASI never went over 200mph - honest!" said a rather excited Andy Green.

Over 400 attended the press day - with sponsors putting up small stands in Q Shed and the whole show revolving around the veteran BBC Tomorrow’s World presenter Raymond Baxter who spent hours interviewing the team members on a small stage. The character and determination he brought out of each interview gave the sponsors a pretty fair idea of what they had bought into. The Tivoli team arrived at 3pm in a large helicopter with 400 people lined up waiting for them - we introduced them to the Thrust team and then Frank Moss unveiled the Tivoli logo on the tailfin - and as a nice touch he and Scott signed their names over their tailfin logo.

"This is a very adventurous and worthwhile international venture - and we are going to see it through together" announced Frank Moss and with that we moved ThrustSSC off to point Alpha for a 200mph run down the runway. The overall coverage was huge with Sky giving the project no less than 10 minutes on air.

But things were happening fast in the US. Craig Breedlove - now joined by Thrust2 designer John Ackroyd - was on his way to the Black Rock desert. His web site announced that there was just a chance that he could beat the Thrust2 record before the great Shell corporate get-together in Las Vegas on the 25th - but just as with all record breaking it takes time and they needed at least another week.

At our end the sheer tension, workload and lack of sleep was daunting. In the middle of this I cracked a tooth and had to submit to root surgery. Fiona my dentist was somewhat surprised when her patient fell asleep in the chair - obviously there was far less tension in the surgery!

Packing ThrustSSC was a monumental task which we had totally underestimated. Jeremy Davey, Robbie Kraike and Brian Palmer never seemed to sleep as the truck loads of equipment was moved up to Stansted. There was an enormous contribution from the Mach 1 Club who laboured on endlessly.

At the last minute the HeavyLift team decided that we had been too ambitious with the load plan for the Antonov so we lost a trailer and a couple of Discoverys which we had borrowed from Land Rover.

Of course there had to be a massive crisis - things had gone far too smoothly up till now! On the Monday the HeavyLift people rang - they were looking for fuel - 100,000 litres of it! Due to a most unfortunate misunderstanding - we had arranged for the fuel to be ready at Jafr - but HeavyLift had the mighty Antonov at Stansted with empty tanks and were wondering how to get to Jordan. Royal Jordanian explained that their deal was only for fuel in Jordan - and suddenly it looked as though we might never get to Jafr at all. Every call we made failed - until I had the good fortune to ring British Airways. They liked the idea and were prepared to swap fuel in Stansted for fuel in Amman - we had the big breakthrough - we could actually go!!

The last to be packed was my office - at 11.30pm there was no time left for decorum - Mike Hearn and I bundled the entire office into my Rover 620 and with the unfortunate car hideously overloaded set off up the M25 for Stansted. We arrived to meet the ever obliging people from GHI International who seem to work all day and all night. They appeared totally unconcerned when we loaded their pallets with unpacked clothing, cheese, baking tins and computers and printers - "We just need to weigh this lot" was the only possible comment.

About 1am there was a huge party underway at the Stansted Hilton - we really were going! The ceiling of the bar is painted with a huge map of the US - so it wasn’t long before the map was improved to include the Black Rock Desert! We then discovered that Joe Fuga had NEVER flown before - so his first flight was to be in an Antonov freighter!

Early next morning we went through the passenger departure and were then bussed out to the Antonov. We had somehow accumulated 85 tonnes of equipment. Inside everything was chained down and the gaps filled with Chris Fecher's brilliant plastic Peter Fanning Polyform track markers - all 300 of them! The team were told to go to the rear cabin and Andy, Jayne Millington and I were sent to the cockpit. It was then that we discovered that there was no passageway between the two cabins - and that the rear one had only one minute window! So the Thrust team might just as well have travelled to Jordan by underground tube train.

I was genuinely worried about the take off - years of aviation experience tells me that you must save weight wherever you can - not fly an aircraft full of trucks! After a lengthy engine run up at the far end of the runway, the Russian captain released the brakes and seemed slow to spool the engines up to max power. The Antonov started down the runway as if it were on a Sunday afternoon walk in the park. It didn’t seem to gain much speed and there was little acceleration. By halfway down the tarmac I could see the piano keys at the far end of the runway approaching really slowly and frankly I reckoned that we had had it - it wasn’t going to fly! The captain then pulled back on the column and we just lifted off as if we were in an office lift. Hell, we could have carried more!!

Andy went forward to fly the Antonov and I went aft to sleep. The remainder of the team suffering the effects of the night before and without windows had little option.

Circling the Jafr desert, we could just make out the 17 track lines that Andrew Noble and Major Nawrez had so painstakingly created over the summer. Major Nawrez is our Jordanian team member - he must be the only Geordie Jordanian having spent two happy years in Sunderland!

The Antonov touched down with a real greaser of a landing and then made its way back to the ramp filling the General's runway with sand from the exhausts of the huge engines. The better part of 300 people were there to welcome us and the media were out in force - racing into the cargo hold of the Antonov to get the first glimpses of ThrustSSC.

The extraordinary feature of this whole episode is the rapidity with which the Jordanians and the Brits made friends and started work. Within 24 hours the workshop was up and running and everyone had been out on the track to inspect the superb surface. The biggest of our concerns is the weather - but as I write the sandstorms have not materialised and the track temperature is 100°F.

The next push is to get ThrustSSC ready for runs and defod the track. ThrustSSC went out to the engine test pan for routine engine tests - and disaster! One of the non-return valves which protect the fuel tanks had failed - with an engine and the tank pumps running fuel was transferring from the rear tank to the forward one. Major surgery was needed and with the offending NRVs removed it became clear that we needed replacements and machinings with which to instal them. Flight Refuelling came up with the large NRVs and work began in Farnborough to make the machinings. The NRVs arrived in Amman within 12 hours so we are making good progress. But even so ThrustSSC will not run until November 10th.

Out on the desert the huge defodding operation begins. Due to lack of peripheral vision (the cockpit is situated in the valley between the huge Spey engines) Andy will drive ThrustSSC down a white line marked with jir on the brown desert. We have 17 such lines each separated by a 50ft lane. Each lane has varying quantities of stones - the embedded ones will wreck the ThrustSSC wheels, and the smaller ones that can be sucked into the intakes will destroy the Spey engines. Everything has to be picked up - all 170 track miles - or the equivalent as Ron describes it of cleaning the A303 road between London and Exeter! Spread out in teams of 10 the defodders start at 7.30 am and work on until sundown at 4.30pm. It is backbreaking and destimulating work - but it has to be done. Put simply it involves walking about 18 miles per day and bending down around 700 times. Initially people tend to get angry over such menial work but after a bit the lack of tension, the clean air and hot sunshine starts to appeal. Leigh Remfrey managed to elevate the entire operation to a new high by introducing quickfire verbal Trivial Pursuits as we pushed on - Pete Ross is still stuck on question 2 - "Who is Mike Tyson’s wife?"

General Mamoun heard of the defodding operation and decided to help. Armed with 25 volunteers and one or two conscripts they set about a massive defod with the General himself picking up stones. In a morning they had filled a long wheelbase Land Rover pickup!

As I write this, we have now covered 34 track miles and are pushing on hard with the next batch of 40 track miles.

The next episode was almost unbelievable. The first I knew of it was that the Royal Jordanian Air Force guards had arrested a BBC News camera team! I arrived to apologise to the General for this intrusion and he called in the BBC team - who made profuse grovelling apologies. It seemed that they had bluffed their way onto the high security base and then set off unescorted and without a permit to film what they wanted. They made it to the Thrust hanger - and told the team that Richard had approved their visit and where was the car. They were directed to the engine test pad where they again told a surprised Andy and the test team that 'Richard had approved this' and Andy gave a quick interview - they then filmed the entire sensitive military area and then were caught. The sheer arrogance of the whole episode was just unbelievable - the more so because the local camera team the BBC uses live in Amman and are not stupid. The General made it quite clear that they could have been shot and the video was then recorded over under supervision. That crew will not be allowed near the base again. And if any BBC Governors happen to be reading this (we have over 3 million accesses and 40,000+ per day) I hope they take immediate steps to change crews - and a written apology to General Mamoun at Royal Jordanian Air Force, Al Jafr, Jordan is very much in order.

About this time Craig Breedlove had his accident. Frankly we were sceptical of an announcement of a record attempt when the Spirit of America had yet to reach 600 mph - as we have learned that the most difficult part is the last 50 mph. Breedlove made one pass at 470 which was so far outside record pace that he would need an 810 mph second pass to break the record. His web site records the second pass at around 670 which was not ratified because of the accident - CNN report a lower speed of around 600mph. Craig might have made himself a huge hero with such large speed jumps in successive runs - but in reaching out so far he exposed himself his team and his sponsors to such a high level of risk that they might have lost all. The car appears very stable until the onset of the accident - was it due to the minor disturbance of the crosswind or was it an unpredictable transonic effect - perhaps it was similar to the Budweiser Rocket whose rear wheels came off the ground also? Is that tricycle layout just not stable enough to be viable? We’ll know much more next year.

And just before the end of the month my 15 year old British national quarter mile record fell to Colin Fallows at 266.74mph. Records were made to be broken and I’m glad that we seem to be making progress again.

Back in Jordan here is tremendous support and interest in the project throughout Jordan, and the local media have covered it in great depth. Somehow we have managed to find a good course with a long weather window and an enormously supportive population. Very soon we shall be operational with ThrustSSC and then we’ll start to learn all over again - but the key point in all this is the amassing of the performance data and the speed increase in sensible steps - so that we really know our vehicle and its capability for 1997.

Safety Fast - the MG people used to say!

	Sponsored by	This site best viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer 3