The Hennessey Venom F5 was unveiled on the SEMA stage and brings with it truly overwhelming numbers. It is allegedly the first production car — if we consider 24 units predicted enough to be considered one — to break the 300 mph barrier.
The maximum speed advertised is 301 mph or the equivalent of 484 km/h — crazy! To achieve this value, Hennessey took the lessons learned from the predecessor Venom GT, another machine focused only and only on obtaining speed, having reached about 435 km/h.
Why F5?
The F5 designation comes from the Fujita scale, and is its highest category. This scale defines the destructive power of a tornado, implying wind speeds between 420 and 512 km/h. Values where the maximum speed of the Venom F5 fits.
How to reach over 480 km/h
The Venom F5 abandons its Lotus origins — the Venom GT started out as a modest Lotus Exige — and presents itself with a new carbon fiber frame. The bodywork, also in carbon, was completely redesigned, with significant gains in the coefficient of aerodynamic penetration. The Cx is only 0.33, much lower than the 0.44 of the Venom GT or the 0.38 of the Bugatti Chiron.
Less friction, more speed. Now join power. And that's provided by a massive 1600 hp twin turbo V8 that will do their best to destroy the rear wheels — the only ones with traction — through a seven-speed gearbox and only one clutch, with gearshifts being effected through of sideburns.
Accelerations destroy Chiron and Agera RS
Also helping performance is the weight. At just 1338 kg, it is lighter than most 300 hp hot hatches in our market. The weight is close to the Koenigsegg Agera RS and is far from the two tons of the Bugatti Chiron.
As already mentioned, the Hennessey Venom F5 has only two drive wheels, just like the Agera RS. What was not an impediment for the Swedish hypersportsman to destroy the 42 seconds of the Chiron in the 0-400 km/h-0. But the Venom F5 delivers even more power than these two and is the lightest of the three.
Hennessey claims that the Venom F5 can complete the same test in less than 30 seconds — the Agera RS required 36.44 seconds. To reach 300 km/h it takes less than 10 seconds. Relatively speaking, the Venom F5 reaches 300 km/h faster than the vast majority of the cars we buy and drive reach 100. Fast is a modest term to classify the Hennessey Venom F5…
Of course, it now remains to demonstrate that they are not just numbers on paper and that they are able to be achieved in practice. Until then, for those interested in one of the 24 units to be produced, the announced price is around 1.37 million euros.
