Is the 542bhp Jaguar XJR faster than... Jetman? We find out

This is Yves Rossy, but you might know him better as… Jetman. He’s been on TopGear before, racing against Richard Hammond in a rally car, but it’s Yves’ more recent stuff that’s really upped his profile.

He’s flown around the skies alongside fighter jets, buzzed the world’s tallest building, and, most famously of all, flown in formation with an Airbus A380 above Dubai.

The chance to do something with him again was not one Top Gear was going to pass up on. And yes, it’s another race against a car.

Last time it was a rally car, this time we’re pitching him against a road car and the challenge is very simple: a 1.5 mile straight, first one to the end wins.

Only it’s not quite straight. Good kink in the middle as road morphs into runway – and yes, we both have to make that turn, me on tarmac, him some 700 metres above.

What else do you need to know? Well, the car is the new Jaguar XJR, sporting the F-Type’s 542bhp 5.0-litre supercharged V8, giving a top speed of 174mph.

Yves wears a quartet of Jetcat jets, each of which delivers 40kg of thrust. He has a power to weight ratio of 1:1.

He won’t tell me how fast he’s gone before, but I suspect the result of this will be a foregone conclusion. I couldn’t care less, because I’M RACING JETMAN. 

I love this. We’re in Yves’ hanger and he wants to run me through how this will work, and how we’ll make sure we start as evenly as possible. But it’s the fact that he has a mini Superman to fly over the map that really tickles me.

Yves has to start from a helicopter. You might think he’s one of the world’s biggest nutjobs, but with a background as a fighter pilot, he takes safety very seriously.

He’s 56. I suspect he wouldn’t have lived this long doing something so pioneering without a very large measure of sense and safety. I ask him if other people around the world have ever tried to copy him.

He shrugs. “A few have, but you need to be very careful and have the aerodynamics and science right, not just be brave.”

Yves’ base is a whacking great hanger in the desert. He’s sponsored by XDubai, which is aiming to bring more action sports to the area, so spends about nine months a year out here, and the rest in Spain when it’s just too hot.

Yves first started working on his jetwing concept almost 20 years ago, having progressed from fighter planes to commercial airlines and, in his spare time, sky-diving, sky-surfing and hang-gliding. He’s completely passionate about flying, still entranced by the whole thing.

The white wing was his first, the tips folded so he could jump out of small planes. No jets on these early wings. That came later. 

While the first wing was largely designed in Yves’ garage at home, the latest design is the result of proper wind tunnel testing.

This wasn’t a cheap thing to do – together with the set-up work and analysis afterwards, two days in a proper wind tunnel cost him about 100,000 euros. 

The wing itself is carbon fibre, but with the jets, fuel and electronic systems, it’s not a lightweight thing. It also has its own automatic parachute.

If there’s a mid-air, um, problem, Yves can jettison the wing and use his own ‘chute to descend back to the ground, while the wing will glide back under a separate canopy. He can’t afford to lose one – he reckons each is worth about 100,000 euros.

In case you’re wondering, the wing has no moving parts. Well, apart from the jets themselves. He steers by leaning his body and moving his arms and legs. He is his own aerofoil. I can’t even begin to imagine how tricky this makes flying.

So, the race. With the wing attached, Yves waddles over to a helicopter outside. His 2.5-metre wide wing is too big to fit inside, so he clings to the outside, perched on a metal pole.

I suspect the buffeting is not going to be very pleasant. 

I have a much more relaxed time of things. While Yves clings desperately to the outside of the heli, all I have to do is climb in the Jag, adjust seat, disable some stability systems and drive onto the road outside the hanger. That’s the start line.

I have a radio, and when Yves is in position he’ll give me a countdown and I’ll set off. He could cheat hugely, but he won’t because he’s as intrigued by the outcome of this as I am. 

The heli hoists Yves up to 5000ft. He then lights the jets and prepares himself. 

And then he lets go.

Balls. Of. Steel.

After a few seconds of near vertical descent, Yves starts to pull out of his dive, gets on the radio and gives me the five-second countdown.

I then depart with maximum vigorousness. Some rubber is sacrificed.

The Jag is very good at this bit. It wheelspins all the way through first and second and doesn’t gain traction until well into third.

I can’t pretend I’m completely settled though. There’s a significant crosswind. Now, I’m not concerned about high-speed stability, but I am concerned about the amount of sand that’s being blown across the track.

I was also warned about camels, and when I went for a quick test run earlier, the corner was really quite sketchy – there’s a bump where it joins the runway, and significant patches of sand. The Jag doesn’t have good traction on sand.    

I can neither see nor hear Yves up above me, but I’m reliably informed by his observer on the radio that ‘he’s streaking across the sky’.

Now there’s an image…

Far below I’m approaching the ‘kink’ (it’s much more than a kink) at about 130mph. I’m not confident enough to keep it pinned, so I ease back slightly to about 125mph and open the taps once I can see the exit.

Shouldn’t have done that. A patch of sand has appeared since my test run. On that I came through here 20mph slower. This time the whole car jolts across the road about a foot, like hitting a wet cattle grid at 135mph. I whimper slightly. 

The Jag bumps on to the runway at about 140mph. From here it’s a dead straight 800-metre run to the finish. 

Love this shot. I was never going to risk peering up through the glass roof at three figure speeds, but Yves has got the perfect view down.

And he’s behind. 

Should have mentioned this earlier, but Yves does have some control over his flying machine. The rotary knob on his glove is his throttle control.

He later tells me that his approach is much the same as mine: “I look where I want to go, and when I get to the end of the curve I accelerate,” he says. The similarities end there. 

I flash across the finish line at a terminal speed of precisely 174mph. That’s what it says on the speedo anyway.

The limiter showed no signs of cutting in. For a big limo, the XJR doesn’t half get a move on. It’s one of those cars that disguises its speed well – each time I glanced down at the speedo I was genuinely surprised how much bigger the number had got. 

It’s a bit later. Jetman floats back down to earth and performs a perfect landing – which can’t be easy when you’ve got a kitchen table on your back and you’re working against a crosswind.

He’s worried about wind-blown sand getting into the jets – it’s the biggest issue he has to deal with out in Dubai – so we head straight indoors for the results.

“I was just playing with the throttle a little bit,” he tells me, “going a little bit forward, a little bit back, and then at the end, accelerating easily to win!”

Ah well. I can’t say I’m surprised.

How fast is Jetman, then? Well, the fastest Yves has had from his wing is 180 knots, which converts to 207mph or 333kmh. “But at that speed it’s really difficult, because the pressure on your body… imagine putting your arm out of a car window at that speed. It’s really pushing on my neck.”

I have a request. I want to try the wing on. “Of course,” says Yves. “First, the parachute goes on, and then the wing.”

It’s quite an operation, but what’s most surprising is just how sodding heavy the whole thing is, and how many straps there are to think about.

With the parachute on, you reverse yourself into the wing. It’s buckled and belted to you and various connecters are, well, connected. From a crouching position I can barely stand up – the whole thing weighs about 45-50kg and wants to pull me over backwards.

“But it’s like scuba, you know. On land it’s hard to move, but in the water it’s very easy,” Yves tells me. “It’s the same for me. It’s very hard to move until I let go of the helicopter, and then, wow, it’s amazing. The first time I flew with these jets and was in the sky and could climb up through the clouds, I was just…”

He tails off, this 56-year-old man as gleeful as an eight-year-old at the memory. “I wanted to fly from when I was very young, I would see angels in churches, read about Icarus and just want to be like that. To fly, to be in the third dimension when everyone else only has two.”

“Ah, wait, I have something for you…” Yves walks off and comes back with some sort of weird eyewear…

Me? I am Buzz Lightyear.

That’s in my head. I actually look like some sort of weird Iron Man impersonator. 

End of the day? Car loses, and I couldn’t care less. Just to have shared some time and airspace with Yves was awesome.

I’d watched him on his first test run in the morning, and was frankly astonished at how agile he is in the air. It’s taken him a lot of time, effort, dedication, study and graft to get his wing to where it is now.

I ask Yves what’s next. What’s the dream?

“You know we have to be safe, but I’d like to fly lower, nearer the ground. I think in a few years when the jets are even more reliable, I can see that you could drive the car at maybe 100mph, and I’ll stand on the roof, light the rockets and take off. That would be really cool…”