Jerod Shelby talks about setting NEW world record with SSC Tuatara
80"We've been through quite a rollercoaster ride chasing this dream. The incident in October was one of the most difficult things we'd ever dealt with."
-00:00 Intro
-00:40 The Controversy
-2:20 Wildcard variable
-3:26 Trip to FL
-7:35 Drag race style method
-8:45 How Jerod feels after comeback
-12:05 On inviting naysayers to watch
-13:38 Addressing challenges on FL proving grounds
-15:05 Conclusion
Jerod Shelby is talking about when his initial world speed record was challenged back in October of 2020.
Shelby founded SSC North America over 20 years ago, with a dream of creating the world's fastest production car. Back in October, the team took the SSC Tuatara to Nevada, where they made headlines for clocking over 300mph.
Shortly after, the record run was put into question.
"After further review in-house, we weren't able to 100% be able to back up our record because of the way we had captured it," Jerod Shelby said.
Then the race was on to rerun for the record. Covid made it nearly impossible to shut down a stretch of highway in a timely manner, so the team took the SSC Tuatara to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The Tuatara recorded the following world-record speeds on January 17th, 2021, at Johnny Bohmer Proving Grounds at Space Florida’s LLF, Kennedy Space Center, FL:
Northbound: 279.7 MPH
Southbound: 286.1 MPH
Two-way average: 282.9 MPH
In a rare twist, the car was driven by the customer, Larry Caplin. Foregoing the use of a professional driver is an industry first.
SSC plans to continue to re-break this world record.
SSC utilized staff and equipment from Racelogic (VBox), Life Racing, Garmin and IMRA (International Mile Racing Organization) to verify and validate speed with accuracy and redundancy.
SSC achieved this speed in a completely different kind of venueachieving this current 286mph top speed in 1.9 miles, not the 6-7 miles SSC had for an acceleration zone in Nevada (October 2020).
There's a huge difference in difficulty between achieving this record in a “drag race” method versus having 6-7 miles to achieve the record. (The level of difficulty is like a factor of 4.)
Having 6-7 miles for an acceleration zone only requires 20-25 seconds of full throttle and full boost. Having only 2.3 miles requires approximately 40-50 seconds of full throttle and full boost. It doesn’t sound like a big difference.but it is.
In a show of full transparency, SSC invited in respected validators to witness the record attempts, as well as all of the testing leading up to the record attempts.
In this most recent high-speed run (ended up being the current record run) the Tuatara accelerated from 274MPH to 286MPH in 2.87 seconds (via Racelogic data) at the end of the southbound run.
The Tuatara hit 244 MPH in 5,280 feet (one mile).