Hennessey Venom F5 continues high-speed stability testing
Having just posted about Hennessey putting its Venom F5 "Fury" engine on the dyno, we wondered when the total package would be showed on test. Well, here you go. The Lone Star manufacturer of gangbuster machines took a Venom F5 to the Johnny Bohmer Proving Grounds on Merritt Island, Florida, for high-speed stability and vehicle dynamics testing, with ex-GM engineer John Heinricy on piloting duties.
This follows other speed runs in places like Hennessey's Sealy, Texas, home base, the UK's Silverstone Circuit, and a runway at an ex-U.S. Air Force base in Arkansas. The day had nothing to do with testing the upper limits of the car's velocity, merely how the Venom felt as it approached those limits. Having said that, Hennessey tells us that when Heinricy chose the F5 driving mode, he made it past 250 miles per hour at least once.
That F5 setting unlocks the entire 1,817-horsepower potential of the 6.6-liter twin-turbocharged pushrod V8 nicknamed "Fury" when the tank is filled with E85. When not in that mode, the redline comes down by 300 rpm, to 8,200 rpm.
It's said there's a proper top speed run planned for the not-too-distant future, again on Merritt Island, along with testing runs at Texas' Circuit of the Americas and California's Laguna Seca. Before the year is out, we should know if the Venom will be equal to the purpose it was created for: hitting 311 miles per hour. With a hotspur goading it on, the Venom F5 certainly does make a sweet noise on the way up there.
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