Gary Gabelich set the land speed record in the Blue Flame rocket car 56 years ago today

American driver Gary Gabelich set the FIA land speed record on 23 October 1970, 56 years ago today, at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. Driving the rocket-powered Blue Flame, he broke both the mile and kilometre records on the track near Wendover.

Blue Flame and the record figures

Gabelich reached an average of 622.407 mph (1,001.667 km/h) over the flying mile and 630.388 mph (1,014.511 km/h) over the flying kilometre. The car's thrust came from a rocket engine rated between 13,000 and 15,000 pounds (58,000-67,000 newtons). During one run, the car briefly reached roughly 650 mph (1,050 km/h), a figure that was also recorded.

FIA rules require two passes over a measured kilometre or mile course for a land speed record to be recognised. The official figure is the average of the two speeds, and both runs must be completed within one hour. Gabelich averaged 629.412 mph on his first run and 631.367 mph on his second.

Aftermath

The mile record was the first FIA record to exceed 1,000 km/h, and it stood until 1983, when Richard Noble took it with Thrust 2. The kilometre record held for 27 years until ThrustSSC broke the sound barrier in 1997.

Gabelich was born in 1940 and grew up in Southern California. He started out in drag racing, and in the early 1960s he drove Bill Fredericks' jet-powered car, Valkyrie. In 1969, at Perris, he set a quarter-mile drag boat record of 200.44 mph (323 km/h) in a boat called Crisis. While working at North American Aviation, he also served as a test subject for the Apollo programme in 1968 and 1969.

After the record, a plan was made for him to drive Courage of Australia, a small rocket dragster built by Fredericks. His manager, Bob Kachler, proposed a match race at Bonneville against Craig Breedlove's Sonic II, with a prize of half a million dollars. Neither car had been completed, and the plan never happened.

In 1972, a experimental four-wheel-drive Funny Car went out of control at 180 mph, and Gabelich suffered serious injuries to his left arm and leg. The crash ended his racing career. In the early 1980s, he founded the Rocketman Corporation with Tom Daniel and began designing American Way, a car aimed at speeds around 800 mph. The project was left unfinished when Gabelich died in a motorcycle accident in January 1984. He was inducted into the Long Beach Motorsports Walk of Fame in 2008 and the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 2016.