Mustang: World's Fastest E85 Car!

[Diego Rosenberg]

Bonneville may be a French name, but it’s as American as apple pie. Not because it’s in Utah, but because it was named after a U.S. Army officer who explored the area. Since 1914, Bonneville has been the site of a speedway where records have been made, killed, and remade. Mustangs are a part of that history, too.

MuscularMustangs reports that a Mustang prepared by Hajek Motorsports and driven by Danny Thompson has set the record for the fastest E85-fueled car in the world.

After passing tech, the team had to prove the Mustang could go straight at 175mph in order to qualify. You can watch Thompson's discussion of the Utah Salt Flats Racing Association’s rules, and the adjustments that the team had to made to the car to conform to them, in the video below.



"We ran the course last and we broke the record, but we had to turn right back around immediately and back it up and run within one percent," states owner Brent Hajek, describing the chain of events that led to his team achieving a new world record with the biofuel Mustang. "On the back-up run, our combined average times were 255.76 mph, and our exit speed on that last run was 258.14 mph. We were the last ones down the track, the last car to get to run at Bonneville this year."

Interview from Motorsport.com



Last year, the team achieved a 252mph run, but they couldn't get the run validated. This time, however, would be different. "There's no other faster E-85 production vehicle out there," Hajek says. "The class they put us in was fuel-altered. The cars we were competing with were nitro-methane. We were running the E-85."

Hajek Motorsports previously attempted the E85 track record with Bill Elliot. They began work on this new 2010 Mustang in June, and approximately 100 days later (with the help of Ford Plastics), they had a car that had soybean fenders and other items tuned to the proper aerodynamic characteristics necessary for the feat.

With a total of five world records smashed by Hajek Motorsports and its E85 automotive arsenal last week, it will be interesting to see how much “greener and meaner” they will be in the 2010 calendar year.