Eva Håkansson not only drives her Killajoule racing sidecar at hellacious speeds, but built it, wired the battery pack and now campaigns it with a five-person crew – including herself and her husband Bill Dube’. Over the Labor Day weekend, she topped 240 mph in her little bullet. Not content with only four miles per minute, she and Bill returned for even more speed on September 13. Business Insider reported, “But Håkansson and Dube knew their creation could go even faster. So last week, they returned to the Bonneville and upped the ante even more by hitting a whopping 270.224 mph. ‘The computer model showed a possible maximum speed of ~270 mph,’ Håkansson wrote in her blog. ‘For the first time ever, practice agreed with theory. We were both pleasantly surprised. It doesn’t happen very often, for sure’” Eva headlined the blog entry, “Now it’s starting to feel fast…” A123 supplied 14 Amp-hour pouch cells for the record attempts. Eva reports, “They are …
Running a Mile in Very New Shoes
The Lola-Drayson LeMans Prototype (LMP) did not make it to this year’s LeMans race at the Sarthe track, but did make its racing debut at another prestigious motorsports event – the Goodwood Festival of Speed Hill Climb in England. Nowhere near as long or treacherous as America’s Pikes Peak event, the race is a good test of acceleration, handling and sheer power, which the car displayed with great style. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sd-vAq4IDRA Lord Paul Drayson, a former science advisor to the Crown, drove the B12/69EV, a car crammed with new technologies, many of which have been reported on in this blog, and which have potential applications in aircraft. He also set a new record for electric cars in the climb, doing a timed run of 53.91 seconds and placing 11th overall in the July 1 run. Goodwood’s hill climb is only 1.86 kilometers (1.16 miles) with a mere 9 turns, and the fastest official time up the slope was the 1999 McLaren …