Last month, Hennessey launched the Venom F5, a car that promises to hit speeds in excess of 300 mph (482 km/h), thus claiming the title of fastest road car in the world.
In order to get there, it employs a new twin turbocharged V8 engine, good for 1,600 HP. The car is also much lighter than hypercars such as the Bugatti Chiron, with a curb weight of just 2,950 lbs (1,338 kg).
Earlier this year, the Engineering Explained YouTube channel came out with a video explaining why production cars have yet to hit 300 mph. Simply put, they didn’t have enough power to overcome aerodynamic drag, rolling resistance and cooling drag.
According to some very intricate calculations, a hypercar like the Veyron would require roughly 1,800 HP in order to hit the mark, whereas the lighter Venom F5 could actually do it with less than what its powertrain is currently putting down.
While we’re not going to walk you through the entire video, we should say that Hennessey did a heck of a job with the F5’s drag coefficient and power-to-weight ratio. Now let’s just hope it’s got sufficient cooling and good enough tires to get the job done, because we desperately want to see it get up to those speeds.
