Lubricant company Castrol will provide lubricants, brake and hydraulic fluids for use in the Bloodhound supersonic car (SSC).

The 1 600 km/h car, which will attempt to break the land-speed record in 2015 through to 2016, is being constructed in Bristol, in the UK.

Castrol has a notable heritage in land-speed racing.

The land-speed record has been broken 21 times with Castrol as a partner, from Sir Malcolm Campbell’s first record attempt in 1924 (235 km/h), to a 30-year history of supporting the Thrust campaigns.

Thrust successfully raised the land-speed record first to 1 019 km/h), with Richard Noble’s Thrust 2, and then to 1 228 km/h with Andy Green at the helm of Thrust SSC in 1997.

This record still stands today and will be the first target for Bloodhound SSC when it arrives in Hakskeen Pan, in South Africa’s Northern Cape, in 2015. 

The Bloodhound is on schedule for its public debut next year, reported the project team on Wednesday, when it will undergo UK runway testing at speeds of up to 321 km/h at the Aerohub, Newquay.

The team, led by Noble and Green, will then deploy to South Africa to begin high-speed testing, with the target of reaching a speed of 1 287 km/h.

The team will return to the UK to review the data, flying back to South Africa in 2016 with the aim of reaching 1 609 km/h.

To achieve this, the Bloodhound will need to cover a mile in 3.6 seconds.

The SCC has three power plants, a Rolls-Royce EJ200 jet from a Eurofighter Typhoon, a cluster of hybrid rockets and a 650 bhp racecar engine that drives the rocket oxidiser pump. Between these power sources they generate 135 000-equivalent horse power, equal to 180 F1 cars.

The Bloodhound will use a variety of Castrol products during these test and record attempts, including Castrol Edge engine oil, Castrol React SRF brake fluid, and Castrol hydraulic fluids, previously used by the US’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or Nasa.  
 
“We are delighted to support the Bloodhound project,” says Castrol CE Paul Waterman. “This partnership gives us the chance to showcase how our high performance products set new standards and push boundaries.”