Fastrac 8000. This is the name of the fastest tractor in the world that “stole” the record that belonged just over a year ago to the famous Top Gear test pilot The Stig and to “his” Track-tor (developed by program to reach the record).
To beat the record of 140.44 km/h achieved by the Track-tor, the JCB Fastrac 8000 piloted by presenter Guy Martin and jointly developed by JCB and the Williams Formula 1 team it ran at an impressive 166.72 km/h at Elvington aerodrome in Yorkshire.
Despite having been developed in secret over the past few months, the Fastrac 8000 was an express request from JCB Chairman Lord Bamford, who stated: “We have long dreamed of trying a speed record with Fastrac and all team worked tirelessly to achieve this incredible result”.
Fastrac 8000 numbers
Powered by a massive 7.2 l six-cylinder diesel engine, the Fastrac 8000 delivers 1014 hp (746 kW) and a massive 2500 Nm of torque thanks to new injectors, a new common-rail system, improvements to the connecting rods or an auxiliary drive system. piston cooling.
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JCB also equipped the Fastrac 8000 with an electric compressor that works with the turbo that the engine has as a series, traction only for the rear wheels and, according to the Farmer's Weekly website, it changed the continuous variation box for a manual ZF gearbox of six speeds.
This is all we can release right now, but tune into the documentary on @Channel4 about this build, later this year. And no, we havent ?? pic.twitter.com/BdphyVNWHi
— JCB (@JCBmachines) June 21, 2019
As for the work carried out by Williams, this focused, above all, on the aerodynamic chapter (as you can see from the front of the Fastrac 8000) and on weight reduction. This is not the first time that JCB has set a speed record, in 2006 the DieselMax prototype became the fastest Diesel in the world reaching 563.42 km/h.