By Jessica Dillon
Joey Arrington is working to break the world land speed record, currently set at 244.9 mph. The target speed is 250 mph, and the effort has drawn support from local businesses, Martinsville City and now the University of Virginia, which signed on as a sponsor Feb. 7.
If successful, the project — dubbed Virginia 250 — would put Martinsville and Henry County on the national motorsports map, while creating hands-on learning opportunities for engineering students and showcasing the region’s growing interest in innovation and economic development.
“One thing, the tie-in that maybe Henry County’s got with the University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson’s dad was a surveyor, and he was the first one to survey Henry County, and when he came across the Smith River, he named it the Irwin River, and I don’t know how it got switched to the Smith River,” said former Martinsville Mayor Danny Turner.
“We’re going to make the Virginia 250, and I hope we’re all a part of, and also, there’s a guy by the name of Kyle Petty. He’s going to drive this IHRA bullet, and we’ve got to make sure that we’re safe, and we’re going to do all the necessary things for it to reach 250, maybe faster. We’ll have to figure out if that’s going to be possible or not,” Arrington said.
Virginia Motorsports, the University of Virginia’s Formula SAE team, is partnering on the VA250 project, giving students real-world experience while contributing engineering support to the record attempt.
Team members toured the museum’s Speed Center and met with Arrington as part of the collaboration.
Riley, a member of the Formula SAE team, said the partnership will help advance their work on a new aerodynamics system.
“Yeah, absolutely. So, the support that the VA250 project is allowing us the opportunity, we’re developing a new aerodynamics system for this year. So, the support for buying material, also the data that we get through the project as well, to help support the assumptions that go into this, help us make better engineering decisions, and ultimately perform better.”
Arrington said the formula for reaching a record-breaking 250 mph is “top secret.”
