THE CAMPBELL DYNASTY|CW
gearing up for an attempt on the water speed record as well. In 1964 Donald Campbell became the only person ever to hold both the land and water speed records in the same year and the team wants to celebrate that achievement 50 years on. That gives them about two years at most to refine the car and boat, and to select the right sites for the attempts. Don Wales will be going for the land speed record, while his cousin Gina will be aiming at the world water speed. The land attempts will probably be made in Australia or the USA as there is a lack of suitably long stretches of straight track (15 miles or so is desirable) in the UK.
Gina has been a record-breaker before. In 1984, at Holme Pierrepont in Nottingham, she raised the women’s world water speed record to 122.8mph (198kph). Attempting to increase the record on the same day in her Bluebird II power boat, she broke both collar bones in a crash eerily similar to her father’s fatal accident in 1967.
RECORDS ARE THERE TO BE BROKEN
In 1990 in New Zealand Gina escalated the world water speed record, achieving 166mph (267 kph) in a three-point hydroplane. Her record stood until taken by New Zealander Heather Spurle in 1993. Gina, who is still chasing records in her mid-60s, can still claim to have travelled faster on water in a piston-engined vessel than either her grandfather Malcolm or father Donald. In 2000 Don Wales, who is 52 in September, set the UK record for a battery-powered car, hitting 137mph (220kmh) on Pendine Sands, Carmarthenshire. The UK water speed record is a more modest 78mph, set by Helen Loney in 2009. As part of the preparations for 2014, the Bluebird team is looking to improve these national records. The plan is that this autumn the new electric Bluebird will be unveiled and will try to set a new time for the flying half-mile and the flying half- kilometre. The land attempt is likely to be made at an airfield as tarmac is the preferred surface. For the descendants of Sir Malcolm and Donald Campbell the need for speed is never extinguished. Records, as the saying goes, are there to be broken.
Below; The electric Bluebird that Don Wales took to 137mph on Pendine sands in 2000. Right; Alongside the historic vehicles shown in London in June was this prototype of the Bluebird Formula E GTL Racer
“Speeds of 400mph or 500mph are still within the conceptual reach of most interested observers, but speeds approaching 1000mph are just exotic”
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