Honda's record attempts on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, USA, reached a fitting climax on Thursday when Alan van der Merwe piloted his Honda
F1 car to three new land speed records, each eclipsing those set on the previous day, when the Bonneville 400 team finally reached a measured mile speed of 400kph.
Since Tuesday, van der Merwe and the team have broken FIA class world records three times over, ending up with an average speed of 397.360kph [246.908mph] over two runs of the Bonneville flying mile.
At the same time, van der Merwe set a new class record for the flying kilometre, with an average speed of 397.481kph [246.983mph]. Both speeds again set a new mark for the fastest officially measured speed by a
Formula 1 car, pending official ratification by the
FIA.
"I think in general the feeling is satisfaction with what we achieved," said van der Merwe. "It would have been nice to have a round number for the record and we are only 2 and half ks off that. In fact, we know we did everything possible to the car; we timed it exactly right today with the weather and we're pretty sure we couldn't have got more out of it, possibly another kilometre an hour but we would have needed freakishly good weather to do that.
"So, yeah, I'm really happy and slightly relieved as well, because it has been really stressful, every day, and we now know we have had the best day possible to run the car. And also the fact that the team did really well – the first thing to let go was the car; Altogether its been great to set the record and very rewarding to reach 400kph, its been a great week."
The atmosphere was full of anticipation on the final day of high-speed running, as the project team arrived on the salt flats in the hope the records could be raised. The team were ready to go as dawn broke, having carried out a gearbox change late into the previous night. van der Merwe rolled onto the course at 0640 local time and consistently recorded times above 390kph all morning until his record-breaking run at 0902.
![Honda's Alan van der Merwe on one of his land speed record runs on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, USA [Pic credit: Honda]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/244915.jpg)
