What was the fastest F1 car ever built ?

Pizza boy at Monza in 2004.

It was at 369.9 km/h, which is 229.845 mph.

 

i thought it was Montoya?

 

http://www.allianz.com/en/allianz_group/press_center/news/commitment_news/sport_sponsorship/news28.html

 

This link says "unofficially" Montoya in 05...but "officially" Honda in 06?

http://www.tsn.ca/auto_racing/news_story/?ID=171601&hubname=

 

I remember Nelson Piquet hitting 223 MPH on the front straight in practice at the French GP at Paul Ricard in the Brahbam BMW Turbo one year, I think it was a BT-54.

 

I believe Montoya had the fastest lap ever recorded in 05 at Monza during Friday testing. That's why it's unofficial. This is from memory, I could be wrong.

 

That link doesn't tell the full story - they eventually got

- 397.360kph (246.908mph) average from two runs over 1mile
- 397.481kph (246.983mph) (average from two runs?) over 1km
- >400kph on one of the runs

 

The Honda F1 team put up 400+ kph at Bonneville Salt Flats last year in a super low downforce, FIA-legal F1 car.

 

Yea, F1 cars are made for down force with a flat bottom, CART cars (used to be at least) are made for speed with tunnels. With downforce comes drag and the CART cars have a much lower drag coefficient. If you take a look at the Honda top speed car you’ll see that they did away with just about everything to get that speed.

 

Motor sport magazine in the UK ran and article about the fastest GP cars of each year a few months back. By average lap times over a whole season the fastest GP car of all time is the Ferrari F2004. With the subsequent rule changes (tyres and downforce in 05 and 2.4 V8's 2006 onwards) almost all the 2004 race lap records still stand. The interesting question would be if the 2004 regulations were still current how fast would the cars be now?

 

2003 or 2004 (not sure which) Monza Montoya set a 162 (and change) mph qualifying lap in the low fuel run off to decide the order the cars ran in the one shot qualifying. That stands as the fastest officially recorded F1 Lap.

 

To me, the question would be how fast would a 1982 or 83 turbocar go before all the aero restrictions and flat bottoms came into play. Then I'd wonder about the rest of the 80's turbocars. In 82, and 83, the BMW turbo was rumored to have nearly 1,200 horse with turbo, and interestingly, if you broke the turbo, that car only had 91 horse.

 

Didn't Gilles race a de-winged 126C against an Italian Air Force F-104 Starfighter? I seem to remember pictures of that.

 

Yeah he did, then the Italian AF gave one of those jets over to Ferrari later on.
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Yes, it's parked at the Fiorano track, I have a picture of it on another computer.

 

Found this info on Google Earth, and this vid of the race on youtube.

This Starfighter has the fuselage numbers 4-27. The number 4 for 4th Wing and 27 was the race number of Villeneuve´s F-1 Ferrari. This F-104 G new resides at Ferrari's test track: the Fiorano Autodrome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RtDMjLrBrs
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Thanks for sharing

 

For the longest time Keke Rosberg's 160 mph lap from the Turbo '80s was the fastest of all. The mind boggles to think what F1 could do with modern day turbos!!

 

This is an excellent question I've never seen answered to date, given teh secrecy surrounding F1. There is no doubt that the BMW or one of the 1200+ HP McLaren-Honda Turbos with the right aero and gearing setup would top 250 mph with ease and with stunning acceleration. They couldn't rev nearly as high back then (a mere 11 to 12,000 rpm), but with huge HP like that, you don't need to!

 

Agreed, if they hadn't banned ground effect cars, that combined with the power of the turbo engines and modern tyre development would mean the cars would be stunningly fast.

The same can be said for the current era cars. Imagine if we still had V10's, track hadn't been narrowed in 94, slick tyres still allowed etc. etc.

 

Well, look at the speeds that the LeMans prototypes were hitting in the 80's with turbos and ground effect cars that were much more slippery than F1 cars; you are right and I don't think aero wise the F1 cars were too far behind the LMP cars speed and downforce wise had ground effects not been banned.

 

F1 racing mag asked Williams about designing the ultimate F1 car without current rule restrictions a couple of years ago. They actually would have stayed with a 3.0 V10 rather than a turbo for more flexible power. The car also had 6 wheels (four driven at the back, and full ground effects. The computer model indicated it would be 10 -15 seconds a lap quicker round Silverstone than a then current (V10) car. However the limitation would be the driver as they would be having to sustain over 5G's on cornering. Even with fighter pilot style G suits that would be almost impossible after 2 hours of racing.