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Henry Segrave

The first person to drive faster than 186 mph (300 kph) (1927)

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Sir Malcolm Campbell

The first person to exceed 250 mph (400 kph) (1932). Broke land-speed record nine times

Donald

Campbell

The only person to break the land-and water-speed records in the same year (1964)

Where are land-speed records set?

■ The first land-speed records were set on roads and racetracks.

■ From the 1920s, beaches such as Pendine Sands in Wales and Daytona Beach, Florida, were used, because they were long and fiat.

■ In the 1930s, the

record breakers moved to the Bonneville Salt Flats—the bed of a dried-out lakę with a fiat salty surface— in Utah.

Craig Breedlove

The first person

Gary Gabelich

Set the first land-speed record faster than 621 mph (1,000 kph), in a rocket-powered car (1970)

(mid-1960s)

What is a dragster?

Dragsters are incredibly powerful cars designed to race on straight tracks called drag strips 1,320 ft (402 m) long.

.Dragsters are divided into types, ^for classes, for racing.

.The fastest dragsters compete in the 'Top Fuel class.

.The ąuickest Top Fuel dragsters 'can reach speeds of morę than 330 mph (530 kph).

.Drag races can be over in less than ^ffive seconds.

.Top Fuel dragsters are so fast 'that they have to use parachutes to help them to stop.