In March of 2018, The Stig earned official recognition from Guinness after he piloted a custom 5.7-liter tractor down a long straight-line strip of pavement. Top Gear's so-called Track-tor hit 87.271 miles per hour, making it the Word's Fastest Tractor. Until now.
With Guy Martin — the affable mechanic famous for his no-holds-barred Isle of Man TT racing exploits — behind the wheel, a modified version of J.C. Bamford Excavators' Fastrac farm tractor managed to hit 103.6 mph at Elvington Airfield near York in the U.K. The tractor's 7.2-liter, 6-cylinder DieselMax engine reportedly puts out 1,000 horsepower and over 1,800 pound-feet of torque. Just as importantly, the team from Williams Advanced Engineering helped the JCB shed some excess weight and then heaped a full helping of aerodynamic tweaks on the otherwise blunt farm implement.
"It had been a great day with the JCB at Elvington, proper job with some right proper engineers," said Martin. "She felt rock steady on the runway, job's a peach." We're not entirely sure what that means, but nobody died in the attempt so it must be a positive.
Back in 2006, JCB set a much faster record when its Dieselmax streamliner recorded a two-way average of 350.092 mph at Bonneville. We're looking forward to the upcoming documentary on Channel 4 later this year that will detail JCB's record-setting run, if only to hear a few more quips from the ever-quotable Guy Martin. Until then, there's some grainy far-away footage of the record-setting run just below.
With Guy Martin — the affable mechanic famous for his no-holds-barred Isle of Man TT racing exploits — behind the wheel, a modified version of J.C. Bamford Excavators' Fastrac farm tractor managed to hit 103.6 mph at Elvington Airfield near York in the U.K. The tractor's 7.2-liter, 6-cylinder DieselMax engine reportedly puts out 1,000 horsepower and over 1,800 pound-feet of torque. Just as importantly, the team from Williams Advanced Engineering helped the JCB shed some excess weight and then heaped a full helping of aerodynamic tweaks on the otherwise blunt farm implement.
"It had been a great day with the JCB at Elvington, proper job with some right proper engineers," said Martin. "She felt rock steady on the runway, job's a peach." We're not entirely sure what that means, but nobody died in the attempt so it must be a positive.
Back in 2006, JCB set a much faster record when its Dieselmax streamliner recorded a two-way average of 350.092 mph at Bonneville. We're looking forward to the upcoming documentary on Channel 4 later this year that will detail JCB's record-setting run, if only to hear a few more quips from the ever-quotable Guy Martin. Until then, there's some grainy far-away footage of the record-setting run just below.
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