They were united as land speed record-breakers, and by a rivalry that crossed into friendship. Craig Breedlove never gave much attention to boundaries. Richard Noble pays tribute to the five-time record holder, who died in April

Breedlove in 1963

, RICHARD NOBLE WAS SPEAKING TO DAVID TREMAYNE

Craig Breedlove, middle, congratulates Richard Noble after ThrustSSC broke the sound barrier in 1997.

I first met Craig at Black Rock Desert when we were running Thrust2 in 1983. He kind of busted in on us when we were in a technical meeting in Bruno’s Country Club in Gerlach. We became great friends because we’d come up the same way, fighting the same sort of battles.

We were in trouble with Thrust2 because of the huge loads on the front axle; we had some 6000lb of static weight there and at around 629mph ‘Ackers’ [designer John Ackroyd] was getting very worried about the drag from the ruts we were digging, and that we might never get the record. Craig persuaded him to change the incidence of the car. But with no time for further windtunnel testing we just had to take a gamble. And it was a hell of a gamble because with slightly nose-up incidence as we reached transonic speeds around 630mph the download came off the front of the car far more quickly than we’d expected. In the end it worked out... just! But we were within about 8mph of flying.

What I found fascinating about Craig was that he’d come up in the drag racing world. He’d gained experience building hot rods and then at 22 he was building his first jet car; that’s a fantastic thing to achieve at that age! We met up again at Bonneville in 1990. We were making a film about Art Arfons and Craig rolled up and he’d been in Utah buying jet engines. It was very nice to see him, and we all had a great evening together. And he took me to one side and said, “I’m building a new car,” and I suppose I was one of the very first ones to know. I said, “Craig, that’s great! What’s the plan?” He replied, “Oh well, in excess of 700mph. I’ve got two J79 8 series engines and I’m on my way.” Well, this was a wonderful thing to happen. I wanted to get back to breaking records again because as you know it’s the most exciting thing you can do on God’s earth! Trying just to break our Thrust2 record would have been seen as an ego trip, but a battle between the two of us – and at one stage McLaren was briefly a threat – could treble or quadruple the promotional value and help us both enormously.