Impressive is not merely defined by a feat accomplished, but by the struggles and challenges we endure to get to that end. With that meaning, the French/Scot alliance behind the 1 Liter Flower of Scotland streamliner is downright impressive. No, they aren’t trying to set a new land speed record of over 2,000mph like our resident Californian, but what they’ve accomplished with their limited tuning time at the Bonneville Salt Flats is amazing. Check out the team’s quest to become a part of the allusive 300mph club in the video above, compliments of Jalopnik.
Based out of Glasgow, Scotland, the Speed Scotland team is comprised of members spread out around the world. Driver Rick Pearson is of Scottish heritage and the race engineers come out of Scotland, where as the expert “turbo guy” lives in Texas and the French logistics team comes out of California. Although it seems unusual, the team works well, according to Pearson.
With the main part of the team and car based out of Scotland, the team can only afford to travel to Bonneville once a year. This makes tuning and testing the streamliner quite difficult since the only place the team can run the car is in Utah. But that hasn’t stopped them from chasing down their goal of 300mph.
Only 73 people have ever driven speeds of over 300mph at Bonneville, only six of which were British, giving the Speed Scotland team a lofty goal to push for.
Unfortunately with less seat time than most teams, less tuning time, and continual problems with the streamliner’s setup at the 2011 Speed Week, the Flower of Scotland team didn’t reach their goal yet, inching ever so close with a top speed of 270mph.
Now that the 300mph goal is well within sight for the team, there is even more drive to come back in 2012 and try again to become part of the 300mph club, or even better, become the fastest streamliner team using a 1 Liter engine. We can’t wait to see what kind of speeds the team brings to Bonneville come Speed Week 2012.