I remember looking at the forward plan in January and wondering what life would be like when we got to May - would we have an operational car or would it still be in bits? If it were still in bits would we still be fighting or would we be another failed British project - seemed a good idea at the time - but lost out due to usual industrial overcaution? Well we are still here, but there is no doubt that we are on one Hell of a tightrope - slow down the spending and the morale will sink like a stone - and the funding will dry as sponsors think again. So to keep the money coming in and morale high you have got to spend on an ever-increasing scale as the team builds. And every time there is a problem it costs a fortune and blows your carefully planned budget. This is no place for the faint hearted or indecisive. It's simple really, you have to spend at an ever increasing rate to stay on the tightrope - but the money has to come in even faster! Get it the wrong way round and you have to stop - immediately!

I was thinking of this on the plane to Switzerland to see Fredy. Ever since I had first met Fredy Lienhard at Graham Kendall's celebration of Lista's 50 years of hugely successful trading he had shown a great interest in Thrust SSC. Being a highly experienced racing driver himself he really appreciates the enormity of the project and is a keen follower. Lista make the most outstanding high quality factory workbenches - as Fredy says: 'Making Workspace Work' and the factory tour was a real gem of quality and clever thinking evolving over 50 years. Fredy and I sat down to review the situation - and within 20 minutes we were shaking hands and friends for life. Thanks to Fredy most of May production was secure, and we still had a chance to catch Breedlove.

It was becoming clear how the financial pattern has to change. We just have to process more deals faster and faster. But the deals have to be very smart and original to succeed in this very high pressure environment. There is no time for reflection - every deal has to go through, somehow. David Fulker of Land Rover turned up on the 14th and we managed to get the deal through in 14 days - there’s going to be a great deal about Discoverys on the Internet very shortly - watch out, it could be very greatly to your advantage!

Down at Q Shed there is tremendous activity - Peter Ross has managed to swell the workforce with highly skilled British Airways people who generously decided to work on the SSC in their out of shift hours. Radar and Jim Clarke who worked on SSC once before have taken holiday from the RAF to help us and the atmosphere is quite terrific. No emotion-just solid confidence and determination.

BOC got the bug early on providing highly skilled welders in teams, and the DRA engineering workshops at Farnborough started prioritising our work. The bug is very catching: as one would-be sponsor remarked "You're just damned well going to achieve this aren't you!"

Over in one corner of Q Shed Brian Palmer and his team are converting the supermarket truck into an air-conditioned desert computer centre. With the special Hughes satellite link we can send car data back to the UK for processing and we will be able to update the Internet by the minute straight off the desert. Just before the end of the month Brian's first new Scania truck arrived - painted in a superb Pineapple Yellow which we instantly adopted as a really original colour.

Later in the month the first of the two startling red and black Supacats arrived. these are brilliant six-wheel-drive all terrain vehicles which are used as tugs to tow and refuel Thrust SSC - they are going to be a huge hit with the public.

The Thrust SSC colour has been a huge problem. We had promoted the car as a matt-black SR71-like vehicle, but when you see the sheer beauty and quality of the SSC you realise that you simply can't paint it boring matt-black. I had tried all kinds of paint companies but there just wasn't the interest. On a plane back from the US we had read of the new paints being developed by BASF and made contact. Over the phone I tried to explain our problem to Jim Love in a particularly clumsy way - three days later they had made up the samples. I opened the envelope and was amazed - they had it first time! On a subsequent visit to meet Peter Dale who had devised the paint spec, I discovered that he is the specialist entrusted with the creating the paints for Rolls-Royce. Peter's Supersonic Black is a special mix of black with blue mica - it's extremely clever and gets us all off the hook. So its Pineapple Yellow and Supersonic Black!

Back in London, Alan Copps was worried - we were about to offer Times readers a day visit to Q Shed with a team presentation on the project. His advisers were adamant - The Times readers would pay no more than £10 and any attempt to hike the price would result in failure in this very uncertain economy. There was no way we could offer for £10 - that was the price paid by the Mach 1 Club members - so we compromised on the strange price of £14. They came in their hundreds and filled the place - thank God and News International!

Over at the Lledo factory Paul Lumsden is getting the new 2nd edition of the Lledo model together - last year we sold 10,000 of the collectors’ edition and a further 2000 of the unlimited type.

Paul thinks he has it under control, but every time we are about to go final another sponsor appears. Today he should get the test models back from BASF with the new paint but there are two more sponsors to come before Friday! The new edition features our desert and already we have huge orders from the Mach 1 Club.

Earlier in the month it was desert time again. Andrew Noble, GPS and Desert Penetrometer in hand, was about to achieve a huge coup. Because a press announcement is imminent, we cannot yet tell you where it is. Andrew has now tried some 10 or so deserts with mixed results.

This best desert has a better surface than Black Rock but the local people had been driving their trucks over the surface for years creating a sort of groove of a roadway which crossed the measured mile at right angles causing huge bump. Our friends had undertaken to trial fill the groove which we felt sure was impossible - wasn’t the desert build a natural process which could not be emulated by man? Well amazingly they had achieved a very stable and hard fill which was every bit as hard as the surrounding surface. We had a course - not only that but with careful course orientation we were able to extend the course by a further two miles. But the desert was seriously hot! Stupidly I ignored all the rules (you must drink around 5 litres of water a day) and collapsed with heat exhaustion after 3 hours desert work. The desert comes with a nearby military base where we can hangar Thrust SSC and accommodate the team. Now all we have to do is to make the money to get there!

A quick call to Alex Prosser at Spirit of America confirmed that they were on the last legs of painting and getting ready for the big launch in mid June. They are still about 4-5 weeks ahead and they will be running at Edwards AFB towards the end of June, while we will be painting - thank God our colour scheme is simple so we should be able to pull up a few days there. But once they start running at Edwards with those wonderful facilities they should pull far ahead - we’ll see about that! Apparently the huge Shell promotion has started - so we are asking all travellers to the US to get us samples of the merchandise which can be obtained at any of the 10,000 Shell retail sites - it should be an enormous success for Craig and build collossal awareness for him and his team.

The Internet team meanwhile were jubilant with the latest results. For months the site had been trickling along at around 30,000+ hits a week - now the total hits had passed the 1.1 million mark and this last week we made over 100,000 visits. 20,000 visits a day is just starting to get serious.

Back at Q Shed we hit a snag with the fuel tank bags - critical components were taking longer to make which meant that we would not get the bags until mid June - which would delay engine runs. We would have to paint ahead of engine runs.

What is noticeable is that people are beginning to suffer under this huge pressure. The team are getting colds and becoming very tired. Steve Dennis the superb craftsman has left. But the amazing Leigh Remfrey has jacked in his job to join us. Leigh was Peter Ross’s highly-skilled college tutor who not only went out and recruited 27 ordinary and two Gold Mach 1 Club members, but then decided to adopt the project and has been here almost every day since.

With people like Jason, Nick and Lee the totally committed the teamwork is inspiring and incredibly exhilarating!

So now we have the toughest month yet. Can we get Thrust SSC running at Farnborough by the end of June? If we do, can we achieve a high enough level of operational confidence to proceed with the overseas development? If we can't do that then we have to accept going to Black Rock without any desert experience and being very second best.

I guess we have a chance - but frankly we have an awful lot of money to make in a very short time and we can't possibly go abroad with only half the budget. Not the least because we have to generate a similar amount to get us to Black Rock in August - and August is the month when the British don’t make decisions! We have a huge amount of work to get the car complete still. Nothing must go wrong and yet we are getting very tired!

Tonight we have hit on a truly brilliant and innovative funding idea - it depends on one incredibly talented man. He likes the idea - we meet on Friday - will it come to anything?

No more crises - just fantastic opportunities!

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