Here's how quickly Bloodhound accelerated to 628mph

This is pretty cool – it’s Bloodhound’s acceleration trace during its 628mph run. Look how straight the line is. Barely any bend on the blue line from zero to over 600mph. In fact the orange line shows how much the g-force drops – even at over 500mph it’s pulling the best part of half a g, piling on around 10mph every second.

So how does that compare with what you’re used to? Well, gaining 10mph per second is the same as a new Renaultsport Megane 280 manages from 30-50mph, or a BMW M2 achieves from 50-70mph. Pretty heavy acceleration in other words. A McLaren 720S or Ferrari 488 Pista sustain that rate of acceleration from 100-130mph. Deeply, deeply fast cars. But above that, they’re tailing off significantly, battling to get to 200mph.

At 200mph Bloodhound is pulling 0.8g. 2.8 seconds later it’s doing 250mph. Three seconds after that, 300mph. Another 3.1secs to 350mph, 3.2secs beyond that to get to 400mph. You get the picture. So that’s 300-400mph in 6.3secs. About the same as it takes a Porsche 911 Turbo or Audi R8 V10 to hit 100mph with a full launch start. 400-500mph is dusted in 7.8secs – Lamborghini Urus or Bentley Conti GT territory. This is a different order of fast.

The whole acceleration profile from 0 to 628mph took under 50secs.

And it’s not going flat out. The acceleration figures we got from Bloodhound at Newquay a couple of years back, where it narrowly topped 200mph, were quite a bit faster. There 60-130mph was blitzed in a staggering 2.12secs. On Hakskeen Pan it took 3.8secs (for comparison, both the Porsche 935 and Ferrari 488 Pista take 5.5secs).

The reason is grip. Rubber on runway has more grip than metal on mud, so Andy Green could build up the power against the brakes at Newquay before setting off. Once running there was less frictional drag, too. Plus, he wasn’t flat out in South Africa because he had plenty of room to play with and, as we’ve mentioned before, Bloodhound is much sketchier to drive than he expected, so feeding in the power gently makes sense.

Still, let’s have a look at some numbers we’re familiar with. On its way to 628mph Bloodhound did 0-60mph in 5.6secs and 0-100mph in 7.5secs. The quarter mile took 11.32secs, putting it in league with a Porsche 911 GT3 RS. Speed at that point was 167.7mph, some 40mph faster than the Porsche...

I know what you’re thinking – bet its rubbish at slowing down. Wrong. Stopping from 628mph took only 68.6secs. One parachute was enough to knock Bloodhound back from 600 to 500mph in 3.5secs. We’ve never tested a car that can stop from 100mph faster than that. Although every car we’ve ever tested takes significantly less distance. Because in those 3.5secs Bloodhound travelled 816 metres. That’s over half a mile.

Bloodhound is enormous, some 13 metres long and weighing about seven tonnes. But the Rolls-Royce EJ200 develops roughly 54,000bhp, so the power-to-weight ratio works out at about 7700bhp/tonne. About ten times better than a Bugatti Chiron 300+. And let’s not forget Bloodhound only has one half of its power units at the moment. Next year, all being well, it’ll have a Nammo rocket motor, almost doubling thrust levels.

That’s a fascinating bit of technology. HTP (High Test Peroxide) fuel is pumped into the monopropellant rocket at the rate of around 45kg per second. It decomposes as it hits a catalyst pack, turning from liquid into gas. It decomposes so fast that in less than 50cm the gas is accelerated to Mach 3. Really. The whole rocket is half a metre long, with a 40cm diameter. The only emissions are steam and oxygen. Just imagine.

Highlights of the 0-628mph run

0-30          3.5secs
0-60          5.6
0-100        7.5
0-150        10.3
0-200        13.2
0-300        19.0
0-400        25.3
0-500        33.1
0-600        45.1