Andy Green drives JCB Hydromax to 406 mph hydrogen land speed record at Bonneville
Andy Green, the only person to have broken the sound barrier on land, has set a new hydrogen-powered land speed record of 406.320 mph (653.909 kph) at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. The FIA confirmed the run on 11 August 2026, recognising the JCB Hydromax car's achievement as the first World Land Speed Record for a hydrogen-powered vehicle. The record was set on 12 August 2026, according to The Guardian.
Green is a former RAF wing commander who holds the OBE. He already owns the outright land speed record of 763.035 mph, set in 1997 driving the ThrustSSC — a jet-powered car that broke the sound barrier on the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. The Hydromax run does not beat that outright mark; it establishes a new category for vehicles powered by hydrogen.
The Bonneville Salt Flats, a vast natural pan of hard-packed salt in Utah, have hosted land speed record attempts for the better part of a century. The surface is flat enough and long enough for vehicles to accelerate to extraordinary speeds and then decelerate safely. Craig Breedlove drove his Spirit of America car there to a world land speed record of 468.719 mph, as the Museum of American Speed notes.
What gives the Hydromax record its wider significance is the fuel. Hydrogen produces no carbon emissions at the point of use — the only exhaust byproduct is water. Whether hydrogen can power anything from family cars to heavy machinery at scale is a live question across the motor industry. JCB, the Staffordshire-based construction-equipment manufacturer that built the Hydromax, has invested heavily in hydrogen engine technology as an alternative to battery-electric power for its diggers and loaders. A 406 mph run on hydrogen is the most dramatic proof yet that the fuel can deliver extreme performance, not just low-emissions pottering.
The FIA — motorsport's global governing body — is simultaneously preparing to open its own land speed record archive to the public. More than two million documents and photographs are being digitised at the FIA storage facility in Valleiry, France, with the land speed record collection scheduled as one of the first projects to go online, The Guardian reports.
The archive tells the story of a pursuit that stretches back to 1898, when Count Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat of France drove a Jeantaud car to 39.24 mph — the first recognised land speed record. Belgium's Camille Jenatzy broke the 100 km/h barrier in his torpedo-shaped electric car La Jamais Contente after two years of swapping records with Chasseloup-Laubat. After the First World War, Kenelm Lee Guinness raised the mark in a Sunbeam 350HP. Malcolm Campbell then set the record four times, becoming a household name in a 1930s contest with fellow Britons George Eyston and John Cobb that pushed the record from 231 mph at the start of the decade to 367 mph by its close.
The archive includes hand-written notes, letters and official records annotated by the people who witnessed or took part in the attempts. Roger Banowetz, president of the FIA land speed records commission, oversees the collection. Soon, anyone with an internet connection will be able to read through the same pages that tracked humanity's slow, then suddenly very fast, chase across the earth's surface — from 39 mph to well past the speed of sound.
