Road car lap records offer sweet, sweet bragging rights, which is why all manner of automakers have flocked to the Nürburgring in search of glory. The Nordschleife is a spectacular piece of tarmac, but why rely solely on a snaking ribbon of a toll road in Germany when we have so many road courses in our backyard? The Hennessey Venom F5 Revolution just shattered the road cap lap record at Circuit of the Americas, and if that isn’t Texan, I don’t know what is.
Developed by British firm Delta Motorsports, the same company that built the chassis for the Grand Prix Masters series, the Venom F5 isn’t just a stretched Lotus with a V8 in the middle. It’s a ground-up engineered hypercar meant to go seriously, seriously fast. Hennessey claims to be targeting 300 miles per hour, which would be quite the feat.
Right behind the driver sits a 6.6-liter twin-turbocharged V8 with a rated output of 1,817 horsepower and 1,193 lb.-ft. of torque. Redline? Well, that depends. A flashy graphic on Hennessey’s website touts 8,000 rpm, while a spec sheet on the same website claims 8,500 rpm from the engine in F5 mode and 8,200 rpm normally. Disputed territory, but either of those figures would be impressive for a streetable engine with a cam-in-block design. All that power goes into a semi-automatic transaxle driving the rear wheels only.
There’s more to speed than just a thumping great engine, though. As with many modern hypercars, the Hennessey Venom F5 Revolution features a carbon fiber tub, double wishbone suspension at all four corners, and carbon ceramic brakes. The Revolution variant specifically adds a big aero package to increase downforce with the goal of cutting quick lap times. Well, one quick lap time was just achieved, with the Hennessey Venom F5 Revolution lapping Austin, Texas’ Circuit of the Americas in 2:10.90. As you’d expect, the onboard footage is pretty rowdy.
So, how does the Hennessey Venom F5 Revolution measure up to a current Cup Series car? The NASCAR lap record at COTA of 2:11.549 was set by Christopher Bell at last weekend’s 2024 EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix, meaning the fastest a Cup Series stock car’s ever been around that circuit was around six-tenths of a second slower than this Anglo-American creation. Why around? Hennessey only specified its lap time to the hundredth of a second rather than to the thousandth. Still, that’s bloody quick, quicker than a Czinger C21 or a McLaren P1.
Will this hypercar make it to 300 mph? Who knows? Either way, the Hennessey Venom F5 Revolution is blazingly fast around a track, proof that carbon fiber and cubic inches make great friends. It’s safe to say that 2024 isn’t a bad year to be both into cars and on Forbes’ radar.
(Photo credits: Hennessey)
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No doubt many cars that are built to a different specifications and cost structures are as fast as other cars built to different specifications and cost structures.
In addition to the comments below about it all, it also seemed to be slowing down relatively quickly when closing in on 200mph. Still accelerating, but slower than I would expect something with a target of 300mph.
When they build one for a top speed run it certainly will have a much slipperier aero package than this, which was made for cornering. All that Aero will bring the top speed waaaaay down.
Looked at another way, that 1800hp $2.3million freakazoid is 1.5 seconds slower than a MotoAmerica rider on a Stock 1000 class Suzuki GSX-R back in 2016: 2:09.456
Mind, that isn’t even the Superbike class spec bike. Just the Stock 1000 class.
It’s also similarly slower than a 765cc Triumph powered, Moto2 race bike.
The Venom does manage to be about 4.6 seconds quicker than a 250cc Honda Moto3 bike. So, THAT’s something to brag about at least………….
Even considering 4 wheels only, it’s an 1800hp custom no-rules build that’s 5.34 seconds slower than an NSX GT3, making 550HP limited by GT3 spec. It’s also 6.62 seconds slower than a Mustang Trans Am, another car built to class rules. Is it the tires, or is the Hennessey just undrivable?
Because it has street aero and tires. It doesn’t makes anywhere near GT3 downforce, and it was on Cup 2s rather than slicks.
I’m fully on board with the tires being a limiting factor, but not as much downforce. I would understand in most other situations, but this is a multi-million-dollar vehicle whose body doesn’t have to abide by any standards or rules other than having blinkers. It *is* a race car. That said, I understand how tires could potentially account for the full difference.
Edit: I didn’t mean to keep the tone from my earlier rant, sorry about that. You’re right that I shouldn’t compare a road car to race cars, I’ve made a false equivalency based on my belief that it shouldn’t be considered a production car, that doesn’t mean it should be measured on the same level as racing cars wearing slicks.
Drives like it’s STOLEN because Hennessey cars are made from stolen parts!
That’s pretty fast, but for some reason I just can’t bring myself to be impressed. Maybe it’s my bias against Hennessey
because he’s a scumbag, but for me it’s just a heavily modified hot rod/race car that exists to cheat production car records. It’s just a cheesy strategy.I know other hypercars are also low-volume, but there’s this attention-hungry kit-car vibe shared between the likes of Hennessey, SSC, Lykan and Devel that just isn’t particularly inspiring.
Other dedicated track cars like KTM’s, Radicals, Caterhams, Ginettas and Ariels are honest, they don’t pretend to be road cars or chase after road car records, they’re obviously not production.
Meanwhile, other less-historied hypercar manufacturers like Rimac, Pagani and Koenigsegg manage to impress me, and it’s because of the same kind of honesty. Pagani doesn’t chase records, Koenigsegg and Rimac manufactured cars from the ground up (and are therefore production cars), and none of them use a fully aftermarket, hot-rodded version of an existing engine, but instead either use a supplier’s engine as-is (AMG in Pagani) or build their own drivetrain, thus retaining a reasonable claim of being production cars.
Hennessey is just a guy with the money to commission a handful of custom shells with a drag racing billet LS block, all the engineering is done at Delta Motorsports, then parts are thrown at a Chevy smallblock until it makes enough power.
This really wouldn’t bother me if it was just a track toy meant to be driven, but they’ve made it crystal clear from the start that it’s a world record attempt car, not a track toy like a Radical, racing homologation special like a Saleen S7, or luxury rolling artwork like a Pagani. It’s not a car meant to stand on its own merit for passion, it exists instead to be compared to other vehicles whose rules it doesn’t have to follow.
Unlike a Chiron, GT2 RS, Senna, Zonda, Nevera or Agera, a Hennessey doesn’t have to meet crash, emissions, noise or quality standards, the constraints and challenges of making a blistering-fast production car don’t apply to it because it isn’t a real production car, it just got a sticker from the DMV that says “PRODOCSHUN”.
I think I also see a yoke steering wheel with no place on it for an airbag either.
I guess Caterhams aren’t built to full road car regulations, but they have built literally thousands of them, so I don’t feel they should be put in the same category as Hennessey.
I wasn’t putting them in the same category as much as I was using Caterham as an example of how specialized track cars can be respectable, contrasted with Hennessey’s insistence on stomping around and pretending to make production cars. If anything, Caterham have way more right to claim production because, as you mentioned, they’ve made thousands of them.
Wow, they left a lot on the table. I have raced at COTA. Mid-corner apex speeds are about the same as a Spec Miata and you can hear the driver is very late to start picking up the throttle. Maybe the throttle is like an on/off switch. It accelerates like a beast though.
I coulda squeezed a couple more tenths out of it (J/K). Was the Stig driving?
I mean for only $2,350,000 more than a NASCAR Next Gen Car, you too can be ~0.6 seconds a lap faster around COTA
But did it exceed track limits at every turn to the edge of the grass and hit every curb with it’s inside tires or even drive on the outside of the curbs to avoid them?
The rowdiest thing about it is how rowdy it isn’t. Lateral 1.3G through some of those turns!
YES, but I sure wouldn’t want to get turned into the wall at ‘Dega in that thing.
Can report from experience here. You don’t want to hit the wall at Talladega in any damn car.
YMMV
Of course. But I’d rather be in a car that was designed for it.