The full form of LSR is Land Speed Record.

The land speed record (or absolute land speed record) is the highest speed achieved by a person using a vehicle on land. There is no single body for validation and regulation; in practice the Category C (“Special Vehicles”) flying start regulations are used, officiated by regional or national organizations under the auspices of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA). The land speed record (LSR) is standardized as the speed over a course of fixed length, averaged over two runs (commonly called “passes”). Two runs are required in opposite directions within one hour, and a new record mark must exceed the previous one by at least one percent to be validated.

It was May 1997, and the 34-year-old British fighter pilot was, technically at least, on holiday. He’d saved up his time off to come out to a desolate, sun-baked mudflat near the village of Al-Jafr in Jordan. Here he was driving – or perhaps more accurately, piloting – a 10-tonne (11-US-ton), 14.5-m-long (48-ft) jet-powered car called Thrust SSC. Along with a team of sunburned, dust-covered engineers, he was trying to iron-out the last few problems with the vehicle before shipping it off to the United States for a world record attempt.