Engineer Steve Thomas has broken the world speed record for soap box derby racing – taking it to the dizzy speed of 64mph.

Mr Thomas, from New Road, Bromham, won the Cairngorm Soapbox Extreme over a two-mile mountain road near the ski resort of Aviemore the weekend before last, scooping the King of the Mountains title.

It is his third soapbox success in the last 12 months but the icing on the cake was breaking the world speed record for a soap box vehicle by 2mph. His top speed was a thrilling 64mph.

Mr Thomas said: “This is the most challenging course of them all and the longest. There were a lot of crashes but I managed to get down on all my runs without any mishap.

“It is a great feeling going along those roads at that kind of speed but I was never concerned. It is very stable and there are proper hydraulic brakes fitted.”

But the day caused his wife Pam some concerns.

She was waiting along the course for Mr Thomas to come through on his vehicle C12, known affectionately as The Beast. She said: “I heard over the PA system that someone had crashed and of course I automatically thought it was Steve.

“I started running up the hill and then Steve came sailing past. He’d had a technical hitch so had come down in the following heat.”

C12 is named after Mr Thomas’s company C12 Composites, which makes components for racing cars.

He built C12 for his son Patrick, now 17 and a pupil at Calne’s John Bentley School, when he was eight. But when he heard of a soap box race along Chippenham High Street a few years ago, he entered.

Mr Thomas, who is also a lecturer in composites engineering at Wiltshire College’s Castle Combe campus, said: “It needed quite a bit of modification so I could get inside, but I am very pleased with the result.”