Chris Harris with Andy Green. There's some racing with a Radical SR3 mixed with some fascinating talk from Andy Green about supersonic cars. Two things stood out for me.
Firstly, how well he gets across the enormous complexity of building and driving one. For example, I hadn't really thought about the degree of difficulty involved in making one car that can be driven at subsonic, transonic and supersonic speeds because I didn't appreciate how radically different those things are. I also didn't know that a car has almost no lateral grip at higher speeds. A slight crosswind and you're sliding sideways. The tiniest imbalance in lateral weight distribution and you're sliding sideways. You don't want to be sliding sideways at 600+ mph and you don't have much margin of error in correcting it.
Secondly, his cheerful attitude towards the possibility of being killed doing it. It's not foolishness or ignorance. He knows the risks and carefully minimises them. He also knows that it's inherently dangerous and if anything goes wrong at those speeds it will be hugely destructive. One degree off balance and:
Fascinating stuff.
Firstly, how well he gets across the enormous complexity of building and driving one. For example, I hadn't really thought about the degree of difficulty involved in making one car that can be driven at subsonic, transonic and supersonic speeds because I didn't appreciate how radically different those things are. I also didn't know that a car has almost no lateral grip at higher speeds. A slight crosswind and you're sliding sideways. The tiniest imbalance in lateral weight distribution and you're sliding sideways. You don't want to be sliding sideways at 600+ mph and you don't have much margin of error in correcting it.
Secondly, his cheerful attitude towards the possibility of being killed doing it. It's not foolishness or ignorance. He knows the risks and carefully minimises them. He also knows that it's inherently dangerous and if anything goes wrong at those speeds it will be hugely destructive. One degree off balance and:
Fascinating stuff.
