Key findings

• The Hennessey Venom F5 can theoretically reach 328 miles per hour at its current power level.
• John Hennessey’s main goal in an upcoming record attempt is to achieve an average speed of over 300 miles per hour in both directions, but he is also aiming for 500 km/h.
• Hennessey will not keep catching up when another automaker gets faster.

The Hennessey Venom F5 is one of several cars in a new class of top speed kings that also includes the Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut and SSC Tuatara. None of these machines have yet exceeded 300mph, but we know Hennessey and Koenigsegg will at least give it a go. 300mph might be the goal, but how fast can the Hennessey Venom F5 really go in an ideal world? Ahead of Monterey Car Week, where a new special edition Venom F5 was unveiled, AutoBuzz I spoke to John Hennessey and asked him directly: How fast can the Venom F5 go?

The magic number is …

“I believe in the CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulation software, at our current power level, it’s 328 miles per hour.”

– John Hennessey, Founder and CEO of Hennessey Performance Vehicles

That’s a remarkable number, and if Hennessey achieves it, it would be by far the fastest hypercar on the market. But that doesn’t mean Hennessey wants to go to the extreme. “We don’t intend to go that fast,” explains Mr. Hennessey, telling us that “it might take me ten or twelve kilometers to do that.”

The tires are ready to drive

There is a much There are many factors that go into reaching such high speeds. One of them is the tires. Hennessey says this is one of the areas they don’t have to worry about: “We work very closely with the people at Michelin and Michelin is confident that the tire is good for what we’re trying to do. But we’re not planning on going crazy. I think over 300 mph is crazy enough anyway.”

This is not a competition with other car manufacturers

So 300 mph is the main target, something Hennessey has talked about numerous times since the day the Venom F5 was revealed, but there is another goal that Hennessey says is high on the priority list. “An average of over 300 mph in both directions (is the goal), but if we can get to 500 km/h (310.686 mph) in one direction, that would be pretty cool,” Hennessey says, “those are our goals.” But when asked if Hennessey sees this as a competition, and if Hennessey would make multiple attempts if another hypercar maker usurped its top speed, Hennessey answered in the negative.

“I said years ago when we introduced the F5 that we wanted to break 300 mph and we intend to keep that promise. Now let’s say another manufacturer brings 350 mph to market, are we going to try and hit 351 mph? We’re very competitive but I just don’t know how important that is to our customers. I think most of our customers buy and enjoy their F5 because of the build quality, the incredible performance and the driving experience.”

“There is always someone faster than you”

Hennessey has been in the performance business for a long time, and in America, where drag racing and land speed records are breaking new top speeds every few years, he doesn’t expect his company to always be at the top. “Having a certain tradition and telling a cool story at the cocktail party about being the fastest in certain categories is cool, but I don’t think it’s that important to always be the fastest,” he explains, telling us that “racers have an old saying that goes, ‘There’s always someone faster.’ That basically means I can be the fastest at a certain thing for a certain amount of time, but over time someone else may want to push the boundaries further and risk life and limb.”

He explains that in this pursuit, “things can go wrong,” and tells us that statements made by the likes of Stephan Winkelmann during his tenure at Bugatti and Christian von Koenigsegg not continuing the pursuit of top speed records hold water. “I think it was smart, whether it was Winkelmann or someone else who decided to say, okay, maybe we’ll take a break (from top speed records).”

How is the competition doing?

Now that we know what the Venom F5 is technically capable of, it’s worth reminding us what the competition can do. All this talk of 300 mph may seem redundant considering Bugatti has already hit 300 mph with the Chiron, but that record came with a pretty big caveat: it wasn’t a production car. That was a prototype that visually inspired the limited-edition Chiron Super Sport 300+, and no customer car could ever reach that top speed. Still, Bugatti could come back with a production car that can do 300 mph, and the new Tourbillon could be just that, with a speedometer that goes up to 550 km/h (341.75 mph).

Other candidates are:

• Koenigsegg Jesko Absolute: The low-drag top speed variant of the Jesko theoretically reaches 530 km/h, 4 km/h more than the Venom F5. Like the Venom F5’s theoretical top speed, this is an estimate from CFD simulations and therefore no guarantee that Koenigsegg will actually reach it. We won’t have to wait long to find out how fast the Jesko Absolut can go, however, as a record attempt is expected before the end of the year. The Jesko has already set a number of records this year, the most recent being the production car lap record around Laguna Seca.
• SSC Tuatara: The SSC Tuatara, a controversial hypercar, once claimed to reach 330 mph, but was later proven (and admitted) to not have reached 300 mph. But CEO Jarrod Shelby wants to attack 300 mph again and has so far averaged 282.9 mph both ways in 2021 and a one-way speed of 295 mph in 2022 with a customer behind the wheel. Of all the top speed candidates currently available, this is still the fastest speed physically achieved in a customer vehicle.
• Czinger 21C: Currently, the Czinger 21C in the V Max version only reaches a top speed of 253 mph, but founder and CEO Kevin Czinger recently said AutoBuzzHe would love to have top speed bragging rights and claims a differently geared version of the 21C could be just what Czinger needs to break even more records. Last weekend, Czinger announced it had reclaimed the production car record from Hennessey at the Circuit of the Americas in Texas.