Hennessey Wants More Than Just Top Speed Records With Venom F5

Last year, Hennessey had suggested a top-speed record attempt with the Venom F5 was imminent, with the location alleged to be a public highway in Texas. But that never happened, so in a recent interview with Hennessey's design director, Nathan Malinick, we had to ask why.

«If you want to know why we haven't gone to that highway yet, you'll have to ask the guys building it; it's not finished yet,» says Malinick. «It's been under construction for about five years now, so as soon as that's done, we're ready to go.» The American supercar manufacturer already has tentative approval from the Texas Department of Transport (DOT), with a freshly-tarred highway being an ideal setting for such an attempt. The slightest bump at 300 mph could easily result in a loss of life, something Malinick was quick to point out when talking about how crazy it is to arrange such record attempts and why Hennessey is waiting for the perfect opportunity.

However, while the record attempt didn't happen in the original timeline we'd hoped, Malinick assures us it's still going to happen — along with a few more record attempts… «We have every intention of going after those records, whether it's top-speed runs or on a track, we want to leave our mark with F5.»

Our ears pricked when he mentioned records on a racetrack, and immediately, we jumped to the holy grail of automotive lap times for production cars: the Nordschleife. But the likelihood of that happening soon is slim. Hennessey has never attempted a Nurburgring lap record before, but last year, it made a big hire of someone who has been involved in setting lap records when Brian Jones joined as VP of Engineering. Jones formerly worked for Multimatic, where he was involved with the development and manufacture of cars like the Mercedes-AMG One — an engineering marvel that's proven itself around the Green Hell.

«We spoke to Brian Jones about what's involved, and it's not easy,» he tells us. «You effectively have to set up a full satellite division at the Nurburgring to make that happen. We'd love to do it, and we're all petrolheads here and dream of doing things like that, and we think the F5 could put down a seriously competitive time. But