So, how do you train to drive the world’s fastest car? This is the question that SSC driver Andy Green has been asked many times already and will no doubt be asked many more before this year is over. Andy’s usual answer is an obvious one: ‘First you have to join the Royal Air Force and fly fighters for 10 years’! Certainly a good start, but what else can you do to prepare to drive the most powerful vehicle in the world, which uses a completely revolutionary steering method (steering with the rear wheels) and, if it is anything like Thrust 2, will slide all over the place below 350 mph? Andy has approached the problem by using a combination of methods, including practising his flying skills, simulator training and taking driving lessons!
You would expect that after 10 years of flying Phantoms and Tornados, Andy wouldn’t need to practice his flying much more, but flying
needs regular practice to maintain a very high standard. Andy is fortunate that his current job (working with the Defence Research Agency
(DRA) at Farnborough) gives him enough time off to fly occasionally with 100 Squadron at RAF Leeming, making sure that the skills which got
him selected to drive SSC are ready when he needs them. His job at Farnborough also helps in this respect - he is the air defence specialist
on the ‘JOUST’ air combat simulator, which is the best of its kind in Europe and one of the best in the world. Andy spends his
working day training on and flying simulations of high-performance jet fighters to assess their air combat capability - another good way of
keeping his flying skills up to speed.
Those people who saw the part-finished SSC at the Motor Show last October will already have seen the SSC simulator which Andy is using
to train on. The Defence Experimental and Research Agency (DERA), of which the DRA is a part, has done a great deal of research and
development work to help make the SSC the safest and most powerful Land Speed Record vehicle ever made, and this work has included making
the simulator that was at the Motor Show. The SSC is the first programme ever to use high-fidelity simulation for driver training and
research and we are very grateful for all the help and support that DERA have given us. For the computer enthusiasts out there, there will
be an article on the simulator, and what it’s like to drive, coming out soon.
What? Andy Green can’t drive? You can’t be serious!......... Well actually he can drive - as his success in the rally-driving phase of the driver-selection showed. But driving on the road, or even a slow rally course, is not the same as controlling a vehicle like Thrust SSC on the desert. Andy needed to find a way of improving his car-control in a demanding environment, so the team approached the drivers’ school at Silverstone. The school was very generous in offering their help to teach Andy some new driving skills and developing his on-the-limit car control........ not that we’re expecting the SSC to be ‘on-the-limit’ all the time, but it is a totally new vehicle and nobody really knows how it will handle; hence we have chosen someone like Andy who should be able to cope with just about anything, especially after Silverstone has finished with him!
The training that the school can offer includes skid-car, saloon car and single-seat racing car training. If you have never done anything like this before, give them a call and they can arrange a course for you - as well as improving your driving and car control (and who hasn’t wished that they had a bit more of that at some time during the winter?), it’s also fantastic fun! Andy has benefitted enormously from the experience, another part of ensuring that he is fully prepared for the race of the century.
Andy Green, March 1996
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