Malcolm Campbell

Born in Chislehurst, Kent, the son of a diamond merchant, this Briton developed a taste for motorbikes and motorsport in Germany, where he learned the diamond trade. On his return he competed successfully in motorbike racing from 1906 to 1908 before switching to racing cars in 1910, most of which he drove on the Brooklands track. He painted his very first racing car blue and called it Blue Bird. During the First World War, he initially served as a motorbike courier, but soon transferred to the British Air Force.

After the war, he discovered his particular passion for record-breaking runs on land and water, which he subsequently completed with great success. For example, on 21 July 1925, he was the first to travel at over 150 miles per hour (150.766 mph/242.6 km/h) on the Pendine Sands in Wales. After returning from Florida, where he set a world record of 245.736 mph/395.474 km/h at Daytona Beach in February 1931, he was received by King George V and knighted on 24 February 1931.

Exactly one year later to the day, he was the first to break the 250 mph barrier (253.968 mph/408.6 km/h), again at Daytona Beach, and on September 3, 1935, he was also the first to break the 300 mph barrier (301.129 mph/484.5 km/h) at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. In his record-breaking vehicles, always called Blue Bird, gigantic aircraft engines had provided the desired forward momentum since 1927.

Compared to this passion for driving as fast as possible in a straight line, his excursions into racing unjustly took a back seat. Campbell was also highly successful here: At the wheel of the Mercedes-Benz SS (for Super Sport) with the legendary English registration number GP 10, he succeeded in 1930, for example, in taking first place in the Whitsun race at the Brooklands track and a class victory in the Tourist Trophy, which was held on a circuit near Belfast in Northern Ireland.

In the second half of the 1930s, he shifted his record-breaking races to the water and achieved several world records with racing boats of his own design, which he also called Blue Bird. At the age of 63, he died as one of the few high-speed drivers of his time, not as a result of his passion for speed, but of natural causes.