FURY ROAD

Meet the Hennessey Venom F5 Revolution Evo... the world's most powerful internal combustion road car. Jethro pulls the pin

- JETHRO BOVINGDON

I UNDERSTAND THE ETIQUETTE. Build up slowly. Get a feel for the power delivery. Work through the modes gradually before pulling the pin in 'F5' mode. That's F5 as in the highest designation on the Fujita scale for tornadoes. It's reserved for the devastating, sweep away all before them kind with wind speeds measuring up to 318mph. The Hennessey Venom F5 Revolution Evo generates up to 2,031bhp purely from a heavily turbocharged V8 engine and so more than justifies the dramatic billing.

The handle with care approach seems sensible then, but also somehow deeply inappropriate. In fact, diametrically opposed to the philosophy of a car conceived and built to push boundaries, shatter lap records, burst through 300mph and extend a Texan sized middle finger to the establishment. Not wishing to dishonour the Hennessey Venom F5 Revolution Evo's core values, I get just out of sight of the support crew, twist the manettino style switch on the steering wheel until the digital dash displays 'F5', and push the throttle to its stop.

The 6.6-litre twin turbocharged V8's fire hose style fuel rails blast E85 into the combustion chambers and as the motor trips over 5,000rpm, all hell breaks loose. Despite the tarmac grazing ride height and super stiff springs, the Venom squats at the rear, the steering goes light and the world gets very blurry. For a few seconds it feels like the engine's faintly absurd 1,445lb ft might just be speeding up the Earth's rotation. The forces at work are too big to simply be attributed to normal surface bound acceleration. In the frenzy any screams would be inaudible, but my throat is so dry I can't utter a word, anyway. But my brain is screaming, “Fuuuuuuuuuuuu.....jiiiitaaaaa”.