“I think I can do better in the lower gears next time and we can run an even better speed,” says Sean Kennedy, driver of the twin-turbo Hennessey-powered Ford GT that has just set a new record at the Texas mile.
That’s right, this Texan gentleman reckons he can go even faster than 414.7kmph; the time he set driving Mark Heidaker’s modified Ford GT at the Chase Field industrial complex in South Texas.
“I was impressed with how hard it pulled in fourth and fifth gears,” he noted, somewhat modestly, considering just how hard the GT can bend space-time. The race-engineered 5.4-litre Ford V8 has had two turbochargers strapped onto its blue-collar banks, with a whopping 34psi of boost pressure harnessing 117 octane racing fuel.
In today’s money, Hennessey tells us that equates to 2000hp – yup, you read that right – and a 0-100kmph time of 2.9 seconds. As such, the team clocked up speeds of 347.6kmph, then 367kmph and 371.1kmph on the final Friday run. On Saturday, the GT posted 397.1kmph and later 402.4kmph. In the cool conditions of Sunday morning, the team clocked the time of 414.7kmph, apparently 7.4kmph faster than the nearest competitive speed.
Nobody from Guinness was present to ratify it as a world record, but the current standing mile speed record was achieved by Johnny Bohmer from Performance Power Racing on 16 June last year in – surprise surprise – a modified Ford GT. He hit 359.5kmph. That’s 54.7kmph slower than the Hennessey.
Mr Hennessey says he plans on submitting the record run data to Guinness, so we could be in store for a new world record. Watch this space…
Watch the video below to see what a 2000hp Ford GT looks like.
