Black Rock Desert - Land Speed Records

Land Speed Records

The flatness of the Black Rock Desert's lakebed surface has led to the area's use as a proving ground for experimental land vehicles. It was the site of two successful attempts on the World Land Speed Record:

  • In 1983, Richard Noble drove the jet-powered Thrust2 car to a new record of 633 mph (1,019 km/h). Noble also headed up the team that beat the Thrust 2 record.
  • In 1997, ThrustSSC became the world's first and only supersonic car, reaching 766 mph (1,233 km/h).

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