Project Petrolhead

What’s the fastest you’ve ever been in a car? 70 MPH? 100 MPH? 150 MPH? What if you were behind the wheel setting the world production car speed record?

Today’s subject was… Twice.

Born in Oxford in 1961, Andy Wallace is an expert in making cars go as fast as possible. Cutting his teeth in British and Japanese Formula 3 championships, he pivoted to the discipline in which he would carve out his legend: Endurance racing.

 Between 1988 and 2010, Wallace would compete in almost every Le Mans 24 hour race (only missing out in 1994 and 2009) where he would drive some truly incredible machinery. In his first Le Mans outing Wallace, along with co-drivers Jan Lammers and Johnny Dumfries, would race to an outright victory in their Silk Cut liveried Jaguar XJR-9, securing Jaguar a win for the first time since 1957 and ending Porsche’s 7-year winning streak. Over the next two decades, he would pilot some equally famous Le Mans legends like the V10-powered Toyota TS010, the Harrods liveried McLaren F1 GTR, the Gran Turismo stalwart Panoz Esperante GTR-1 and the Bentley Speed 8. By 1993, he had also completed the so-called “Triple Crown” of endurance racing, winning not just the Le Mans 24 hours, but also the Daytona 24 hours and Sebring 12 hours as well.

All this made Andy Wallace the perfect candidate for McLaren, who were on the look out for someone talented enough at 230 MPH+ who could take the helm of their flagship road car; the McLaren F1, to test it’s top speed. The attempt took place in 1998 at the Ehra-Lessien test track in Germany (now owned by Volkswagen, for reasons that will become apparent later), where Wallace stepped out (not in a Nomex racing suit, but a button-down shirt, the absolute madman) to push the F1 to its limits.

During the final run, Andy was asked by McLaren to record a running commentary using his helmet’s built-in microphone. As the car approached it’s final VMAX speed, he uttered the now immortal phrase:

“it will not go any more than 391[KM/H]. But anyway, 391 is quite fast, isn’t it?”

Yes Andy, yes it is. That’s 242.9 MPH in old money by the way. But he wasn’t done yet. Remember when we mentioned that Volkswagen own Ehra-Lessien? Well, they also own a small car company called Bugatti. So, when they decided that they wanted to test their own “fastest car in the world” well… who better to drive it? In August 2019, Wallace set off in the Bugatti Chiron SuperSport 300+ (blimey, that’s a bit of a mouthful) with the aim of writing his name in the history books for a second time.

The Chiron hit a faintly mind-boggling speed of 304.8 MPH (or 490.5 KM/H for those inclined), becoming the first road car in history to crack the 300 MPH barrier. 5 years later, he would return with the Bugatti Mistral (a convertible version of the Chiron) and set another record, this time at 282 MPH… with the roof down. I suppose it’s a good job that he’s bald, or he’d end up looking like Bonnie Tyler.

According to Wallace, there’s a spot on the Ehra-Lessien circuit where two tarmac surfaces meet. He hit that spot at 447 KM/H in the Chiron SuperSport, causing the car to jump and all four wheels to leave the tarmac. For any normal person, that would be a guaranteed brown-trouser moment, but for Andy Wallace? That’s just another day at the office.