Hennessey Venom F5 Revolution Sets New 2:10.90 Lap Record at its ‘Home’ Track COTA

A lot is happening in the United States these final days of March – Jeep is busy going to Moab, Utah, for the 58th edition of the Easter Jeep Safari with four new concepts, Ford is doing record quarter-mile passes in the Mustang Super Cobra Jet 1800 Ford Performance electric vehicle demonstrator, and Hennessey is running as fast as it can around COTA, among others.

Photo: Hennessey Performance

We have already discussed the looks and features of the Jeep Low Down, Willys Dispatcher, High Top, and Vacationeer concept vehicles, and we also talked about the 7.759 seconds at 180.14 miles per hour pass of the EV Mustang at the National Hot Rod Association Winter Nationals. So, all that remains now is also to see what made the Hennessey Venom F5 Revolution gun down the lap record at COTA.Because they’re all Texans, Hennessey counts on Circuit of the Americas as a ‘home’ racetrack, meaning it couldn’t let the previous record holder, the Czinger 21C, get away with a lap time of 2:11.33 seconds, which is now 0.43 seconds slower than the performance achieved by the Hennessey Venom F5 Revolution.

More precisely, the hypercar lapped COTA in 2:10.90 seconds and achieved over 193 mph (311 kph) on the fastest part of the track. The work of Hennessey Special Vehicles, the Texas-based hypercar manufacturer division of Hennessey Performance Engineering, has the new road car lap record at the Circuit of The Americas (COTA), which is a world-famous 3.41-mile-long racetrack.

If you don’t think the performance against the previous benchmark set by the Czinger C21 is impressive, Hennessey also revealed their new lap record is almost seven seconds faster than another previous McLaren P1 record (2:17.12)! The objective for the 1,817-hp twin-turbocharged 6.6-liter V8 hypercar remains to surpass 300 mph (483 kph). Still, for now, they’re content that their driver, former Le Mans class winner David Donohue, was subjected to +1.59 Gs in the corners and -1.61 Gs under braking. For its performance, the hypercar was equipped with street-legal (yet track-focused) Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 R tires, Brembo brakes, carbon ceramic discs, and the latest Bosch ABS technology.

Donohue joined Hennessey last year as the company’s new Hypercar Test Driver – he is a 2023 Pikes Peak record-setter with more than three decades of racing experience, including wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the North American Touring Car Championship, and the Rolex 24 at Daytona. For this record lap, the company made sure there were no doubts about the achievement, and Racelogic performed independent, third-party timing with the VBox satellite telemetry and data logging systems.

Next up comes the +300 mph V-max push – Hennessey has already achieved during the development of the Venom F5 speeds of more than 270 mph at the former NASA Shuttle Landing Facility at Cape Canaveral in Florida. Now, the main impediment is finding “a runway or public road with a sufficiently long straight to allow the 1,817 bhp twin-turbo V8 monster to accelerate beyond 300 mph and return to zero safely.”