Before they ruined it with chicanes, the circuit where they hold the Le Mans 24-hours used to have a very long straight. Derek Bell, five times winner of the race, used the time taken to cover its length for admin and relaxation. He'd check the dials and make any adjustments needed. He'd wiggle his feet to improve circulation much like you do on a long haul flight and, if it was night time, he'd look for the various constellations in the sky. All while driving down a narrow track at 240mph. If you have ever driven at half this speed, you may find this fact astonishing.

In fact it's nothing of the sort. In part this is because Derek is the greatest sportscar driver Britain has ever produced but in the main it is because speed is relative.


Damon Hill took a few days to get used to F1 speeds after a break

Damon Hill used to say that every time he climbed back into a Formula One car after his winter break, its speed would take his breath away. Yet after a few days or even a few laps of acclimatisation he'd be fully 'dialled in' to its performance and invariably wishing he had a few more horsepower under his foot.

So what is fast? As a kid I can remember the battle among Italian supercars like the Ferrari Boxer and Lamborghini Countach to be the first to reach 60mph in less than five seconds. Now that can be done very comfortably by an off-the-peg Subaru Impreza. The Boxer and Countach's descendants, cars like the 360 Modena and Murcielago, now cover the same ground in less than four seconds.



Nine years ago I was lucky enough to be looking after the road testing department of Autocar magazine when it became, to date, the only publication ever to road test the McLaren F1. That day it did 0-60mph in 3.2sec, 0-100mph in 6.3sec and 0-200mph in 28sec. On the longest private runway in the UK, my nerve failed me at 211mph, at which speed it was still accelerating quite hard. Later, given more space and a considerably braver driver in the form of former Le Mans winner Andy Wallace, it recorded a maximum speed of 240.1mph. And while lots of car manufacturers have produced cars of allegedly F1-matching performance, none yet has been put successfully to the test. It remains, to date, by far the fastest production road car ever built. But by ultimate standards, it's a milk float.


Your typical F1 car will reach 60mph in 2.7sec...

So let's enter the world of Formula One where cars have perhaps 200 more horsepower than the McLaren and a lot less than half the weight. But, if you apply the typical pub measure 0-60mph test, they're slower than you might think. The problem is not power but finding a way of putting it on the tarmac. I can remember the McLaren road car would not take full throttle in first gear without vaporising its rear tyres so what a McLaren race car must be like I can scarcely imagine. Of course they now have traction control to ensure the rear wheels don't spin but they're still limited by having only two-wheel drive and grooved tyres.

The result is that a typical 0-60mph time for a modern Grand Prix time is around 2.7sec, just half a second quicker than the McLaren road car. Indeed there are many other kinds of racing car, such as hillclimb cars with much larger rear tyres, or rallycross cars with all-wheel drive that would have little trouble dispensing with an F1 to 60mph. The true picture only emerges after this point, when the Grand Prix car can finally transmit all its power to the road. For while the McLaren road car takes a profoundly impressive 3.1sec to go from 60-100mph, it would be reasonable to expect an F1 car to take rather less than half this time. The bottom line is simple: a modern Formula One car will reach 100mph from rest in four seconds or less. At the fastest circuits they reach around 215mph. So next time you hear someone boasting their TVR will hit the tonne in under ten seconds, bear in mind that's 2.5 times slower than the F1 boys go.


...but a Rallycross car will get there in 2.5sec

All of which is impressive enough, but the problem with F1 cars is that they have to be built to a strict set of rules and designed to go around corners too and this inevitably slows them up in a straight line. By ultimate standards, if a McLaren F1 road car is a milk float, a proper Formula One car is at best a Ford Escort.


'Top Fuel' Dragsters aren't exactly kind to the environment

Don't die before seeing a nitro-methanol or 'Top Fuel' dragster in action. It is one of those experiences that words alone are utterly unable to convey. Watching one leave the line assaults every sense you have: you can taste and smell the fuel, you're deafened by the noise and, if you're close enough, you can feel the ground shake. And as for your eyes, you simply won't believe them: a Top Fuel dragster will reach 100mph not in the four seconds it takes an F1 car, or even three or two; if you drive one of these insane machines and cannot get it into three figures in comfortably less than one second, you're an embarrassment. To be competitive at the top level in drag racing, you need a car that will reach 300mph in a lot less than five seconds and within one quarter of a mile.


Drag racing legend Sammy Miller, with his car Vanashing Point

Pretty fast but still not fast enough. By our ultimate measure, a modern Top Fuel dragster is perhaps a Porsche 911. So if you're now wondering what can top it, allow me to introduce to you the late Sammy Miller and his car, the appropriately titled 'Vanishing Point.' Vanishing Point was Sammy's dragster but instead of powering it by something as inefficient and cumbersome as the internal combustion engine, he thought he'd cut to the chase and use rockets instead. One day in 1981 he went to place in the US called Lake George, lit the fuse and held on tight. An impressive 1.67 seconds later he was doing 247mph. Suitably enthused by this, in 1984 he went one better and reached 386mph in 3.58sec within the specified quarter mile. To this day it is the fastest drag run in history. So Vanishing Point is almost certainly the fastest accelerating device that can have any claim to being a car. Every time Sammy drove it, his nose and ears bled.


A good dragster will reach 60mph in less than half a second

And there our story would end but for one man who cannot go without mention. Colonel Dr John Paul Stapp was a research officer at Edwards Air Force Base in California. During the 1950s he investigated the effects of acceleration and deceleration on the human body. His human body. He built a rocket powered sled and rode it 29 times during which he suffered, among many less serious injuries, concussion, retinal detachments, a hernia, several broken ribs and two broken wrists.

You'd need a decent book to do justice to Stapp so I'll give you just the last of those 29 rides. In 1954, at the age of 43, he and his sled accelerated from rest to 632mph in five seconds. But the test wasn't to see how fast the sled could go; it was to see how fast it could stop. From faster than the top speed of a Boeing 747, he came to rest in 1.4sec. During that time, Stapp decelerated at 45g. When he came round, he found he was blinded on account of his eyeballs becoming temporarily fused to their lids. It would be nearly 30 years before anyone travelled faster across the face of the planet. Incredibly, this and his previous 28 trips on the sled did no long-term damage. Stapp died peacefully at home five years ago, aged 89.