A number of months have gone by since the SSC Tuatara controversy broke, and ever since Jerod Shelby announced a second attempt, we haven’t heard much of anything out of SSC. We still haven’t heard anything from SSC directly, but they’ve been busy.
According to a YouTuber by the name of Robert Mitchell, SSC had a second go at the record attempt earlier this month. Unfortunately for SSC, nothing has come of it due to mechanical issues with the Tuatara.
Mitchell was invited to SSC’s record run because he was one of the initial YouTubers who analyzed the original run and questioned SSC’s results. Shmee150 and Misha Charoudin were also invited, but couldn’t make it due to travel restrictions. This second attempt took place in Florida, and Oliver Webb was not behind the wheel. Instead, the owner (Dr. Larry Caplin) of this Tuatara decided he was going to drive it himself. No explanation was given for Webb’s absence.
SSC ran into problems with the car the day before it planned to go flat-out for the record attempt. Mitchell offers a full explanation in the 30-minute video above, but long story short: The Tuatara ran into heat issues that eventually led to two spark plugs failing. Running multiple runs to well over 200 mph without sufficient cooling eventually saw the Tuatara get far too hot, leading to the Tuatara eating a pair of plugs. Caplin allegedly got the Tuatara up to 251 mph in his final run, but he aborted the pull when he felt the car wasn’t accelerating like it should have. Of course, it wasn’t accelerating like it should have due to the heat soak issues that had already caused its damage.
SSC threw in the towel after discovering there were problems, and never made another attempt. Mitchell says SSC is planning to try again at some point after Christmas (he plans to attend again), so we’ll be on the lookout for attempt number three.
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