JCB Hydromax officially fastest hydrogen car ever

Prodrive and Andy Green wring 406.320mph from a pair of digger engines at Bonneville

So there we have it. Andy Green has once again made history by piloting the JCB Hydromax to 406.320mph to crown it the fastest hydrogen car in the world. The FIA was on the Bonneville Salt Flats to approve it and while its recorded speed remains provisional until the report returns from the Federation office, its spokesman tells us an overturn has never happened.

“Bonneville is the spiritual home of the world land speed record, and JCB Hydromax has just written itself into that history,” says Wing Commander Green. “The car was terrific — stable, strong and fast.” It hit 400.623mph in its first run and 412.135mph in the opposite direction to score an average over 100mph greater than any hydrogen car before it. Besides itself…

Last week, PH watched the twin-engined, Prodrive-run Hydromax average 368.347mph over two runs at Bonneville Speed Week 2026 to eclipse its nearest hydrogen equivalent by 65mph and its Dieselmax predecessor by almost 20mph. We couldn’t help but stick around in Utah to watch the FIA verify its place in history. Not least because they’d turned the power up.

Green gets to add another Land Speed Record to his increasing roster, too. Not bad given he turned 64 on the eve of Speed Week. “It’s not a natural starting place to take a JCB digger engine and turn it into racecar engine,” he admits to PH. The Hydromax is four-wheel drive with an engine dedicated to each axle; while each unit produces ten times the power it does in its stock JCB product (and revs twice as quickly), the crank, sump and bottom end are shared. “Hard mount a pair of 4.8-litre four-cylinder hydrogen-powered engines revving at over 4,000rpm to the chassis and there’s a lot of noise and vibration. But it's also got the most enormous degree of confidence. It just feels like it wants to go.”

And go it did. Following its SCTA-approved record, the Hydromax gained an engine swap – and was fully juiced up to its 1,600hp potential – before enduring rigorous scrutineering by a small FIA team. This isn’t a full-time job for the Federation – its folks flew in from the Road Sport Department, which typically takes care of rallying events. Bonneville Salt Flats are off-road, after all. The record run was a full ten miles – nearly the full length of the Flats – with the flying mile recorded between markers five and six and Andy pulling his (self-packed!) parachute at around mile seven.

While its Speed Week record averaged two runs in the same direction on consecutive days, the stricter FIA procedure demanded a pair of runs in opposing directions within 60 minutes. During which Prodrive needed to swivel the car around on a trailer (it has scant steering lock), swap its aerospace-developed Goodyears, and restock it with hydrogen from a truck hauled onto the salt within that time. They did it in 50.

The Hydromax reserve driver was Prodrive-stalwart Darren Turner, but he’s turned his hand to plenty of other tasks in lieu of an emergency call up. Chief among those has been driving the Land Rover Defender OCTA that smoothly and politely pushes Andy up to around 60mph, at which point first gear of the JCB’s twin Xtrac transmissions engages and he’s off chasing records.

“The seat positioning is lovely,” Darren says of the Hydromax. “The cockpit's amazing. The visibility in the area that you need, which is ahead of you, is great. But you are locked down in a very narrow window in terms of your physical movement within the car and obviously the visibility through the canopy. The standout [during his test at RAF Wittering] was the vibrations. There's more vibration than the racecars I’m used to.

“In the Defender it's about being gentle; I don't want to break traction, but I also don't want to break Andy’s traction and give him a bit of a lateral load on the rear of the car. When the Hydromax goes you just feel the tension go, a little breakaway. I don't do anything else. He pulls away and then I veer off.

“I’m on part throttle on the salt. It would be full throttle on tarmac. All I do [beyond normal driving] is go into the road drive mode and make sure there’s no auto stop/start or parking sensors on. Any Defender would be more than capable of doing what we're trying to do. With the OCTA It's nice that we have got more performance available if we need it – we didn’t know exactly what we’d need until we got here on the salt.”

JCB owner Anthony Bamford and his family flew in by private jet to watch and subsequently announce the world record; Prodrive chairman David Richards naturally wanted to witness his project come to fruition too. It’s the Banbury firm’s first time on the Bonneville salt – how does it compare to their many and varying projects elsewhere?

“The technical challenge is so different,” Richards tells PH. “If you look at the distances you're covering in Dakar – long distance, the suspension travel, two people in the car – here you’re going for straight for 75 seconds. It’s another challenge. And it's great when you can apply the same skillsets to different environments in motorsport.” Is it satisfying to score a genuine world record and tick another discipline off? “There aren't many left, actually! I'm nearly at the end of my career, I suspect. I’d love to sit down quietly at the end of the year and see if there's anything missing.”

For now, his two-dozen-strong Hydromax team can take a break from the searing Utah heat and hit the pub. Top work, chaps.