300MPH WILL BE A 'BASELINE' FOR THE HENNESSEY VENOM F5

John Hennessey intends to take the F5 well beyond 300mph, although tyres and the sheer space required will be limiting factors.

It seems like a new top speed war is brewing, doesn’t it? Last November, Koenigsegg astonished the motoring world by sending an Agera RS down a closed road in Nevada at ridiculous 284mph, and now SSC wants to make its Tuatara even faster. Texas-based Hennessey is hoping to do the same with the Venom F5, with claims that the car will be able to hit 300mph.

That’s quite a suggestion, but now company founder John Hennessey has gone a step further: that 300mph mark is apparently just a starting point. “300mph is the kind of baseline, that’s where we would like to begin,” he told topgear.com. However, there are two pretty big stumbling blocks that may prevent the car from getting all that far beyond the figure. “The tyres and the venue of where we’d run the F5 are the limiting factors,” he explained.

The F5’s predecessor, the Venom GT, performed a 270mph run on the 3.22-mile Shuttle landing strip at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida but, this time around, Hennessey wants to do the deed in Texas. State authorities have apparently already expressed interest in aiding the effort.

While the customer cars, of which only 24 will be made, are expected to pack around 1600bhp from a 7.4-litre twin-turbo V8, the record car will develop much more. How much more? That won’t be revealed until next year, but the GM-derived engine has already been tested at over 2000bhp…