Jet-car racer Jessi Combs, who died last summer in Oregon while trying to beat a land speed record, has posthumously become The World’s Fastest Woman, according to Guinness World Records.
“The fastest land speed record (female) is 841.338 kph (522.783 mph), and was achieved by Jessi Combs (USA) in the Alvord Desert, Oregon, USA, on 27 August 2019,” the Guinness announcement reads. “Jessi is the first person to break this record in more than 40 years.”
The previous record was set by American stuntwoman Kitty O’Neil, whose jet-powered, three-wheeled vehicle hit 512.7 mph in 1976 in the Alvord Desert.
Combs, 39, was driving her famed North American Eagle, a 56-foot-long jet-powered car, when she died. Her goal was to top the current women’s land speed record of 512.7 miles an hour.
Ms Combs’s car crashed due to a mechanical failure of the front wheel and the car was moving at a speed nearing 550 mph. Combs’s cause of death was determined to be ‘blunt force trauma to the head’. The vehicle burst into flames after the crash.
