Eisenberg
Eisenberg

The sandman makes history (again)

Riley Riley

Daredevil Zef Eisenberg notched up another record when he returned to Pendine Sands in South Wales over the weekend.

Eisenberg clocked the fastest ever speed ever achieved by a wheel-powered vehicle with a speed of 210.332mph (338.497km/h).

In doing so he eclipsed the record for a ‘flying mile’ set by actor Idris Elba in 2015 at the wheel of a Bentley Continental for a BBC doco.

Pendine is considered the holy grail of land speed, where the best racers in the world have tried to set records.

When mother nature is kind, the beach delivers a firm, flat sand surface creating the longest straight line race track in the UK.

The first person to use Pendine Sands for a world land speed record attempt was Malcolm Campbell in 1924.

On February 4, 1927, he returned to set the land speed record in his 2300hp Bluebird Railton, with an average Flying Mile of 174.224mph (280.386km/h).

Eisenberg is the only person to ever achieve over 200mph (322km/h) on bike and car at Pendine.

He set a two-way average of 187.962mph (302.496km/h) in his MADMAX 1200hp road legal Porsche 911 Turbo specially built and prepared by ES Motors and his MADMAX Race Team.

The ‘Speed Freak’ racer successfully secured four new records in total, smashing his own top speed of 201.5mph (324.283km/h) at Pendine in May, 2018 and 182.49mph (293.689km/h) flying mile record that he in April, 2019 in his supercharged Hayabusa motorbike, making him the only person in history to hold the flying mile and fastest speed records in both bike and car at Pendine.

A triumphant Eisenberg said thanked ES Motors and his own MADMAX Race Team for working tirelessly on the extensive Porsche preparation, engine build and tune, to ensure we had the engineering and power to achieve this very challenging record.

An additional thanks to the event organisers; Straightliners and Speed Record Club for finding and setting a two-mile course with difficult sand conditions.

The Porsche started life as a standard 2014, 410kW 911 Turbo.

The MADMAX Race Team built a bespoke 4.1-litre race engine with new internals, gearbox, clutch and drive shafts, along with an upgraded E85 fuel system and sophisticated charge cooling set-up to stop engine detonation.

A lot of work was done to ensure that the monstrous power would come in as progressively as possible in order to limit wheel spin on the loose sand surface.

To cope with such an extreme output, the PDK transmission had to be upgraded, and the suspension lifted to allow adequate ground clearance for the sand.

Apart from a full FIA roll cage, competition seats and safety harness, the Porsche’s interior is completely standard, as weight is actually your friend on the sand. It’s about stability – putting enough weight on the tyres to increase traction.

“The Porsche behaves very differently on sand,” Eisenberg said. “The sand creates a lot of resistance and tyre slip.

“In the end we could only use 850hp (634kW) — 1000hp (746kW at the engine) — to avoid too much wheel spin, compared to just 550hp from a factory car.”

Eisenberg is elated to have secured this iconic record at Pendine Sands.

“Pendine has such an illustrious history,” he said.

“Racers have been flocking here since the 1900s trying to set speed records.

“The world land speed record heroes of yesteryear like Malcolm Campbell and J.G. Parry-Thomas in the air have all raced here.

“It really is the holy grail of land speed.”

Last month Eisenberg also established a Flying Mile record at Pendine, racing his MADMAX 400bhp (300kW) supercharged Suzuki Hayabusa motorcycle.

The records come less than two years after he surviving Britain’s fastest-ever, 370km/h motorcycle crash.

He has since added over a dozen new British speed records since that fateful day.

Zef Eisenberg

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