JCB Fastrac storms to new British speed record
Guy Martin exceeds 103 miles/h in JCB Fastrac to set new British speed record for tractors
JCB have set a new British speed record for tractors with their high-speed Fastrac machine. The tractor notched up 103.6 miles/h at Elvington Airfield, near York, with TV presenter and engineering guru Guy Martin behind the wheel. It smashed the previous 87.27 miles/h record set in March 2018 by Top Gear’s Track-Tor.
Guy Martin said it had been a great day with the JCB at Elvington, adding ‘Proper job with some right proper engineers. She felt rock steady on the runway, job’s a peach.’
A team of JCB engineers has been working on the secret project to develop the tractor over the past few months and today JCB chairman Lord Bamford praised their ‘amazing achievement’.
He said: ‘We’ve long harboured a dream to attempt a speed record with the Fastrac and the whole team has worked tirelessly to achieve this amazing result. I’m extremely proud of what they have achieved in such a short space of time. It is British engineering at its best and it really does highlight the skills and innovation we have in our engineering team. They have done a truly fantastic job.’
It was Lord Bamford’s idea to develop a tractor which had a high road speed capable of field work and the speed record achieved yesterday came exactly 28 years to the day since the first production model rolled off the line.
JCB are no stranger to land speed records. In 2006, their DieselMax streamliner set a new diesel land speed record when it reached 350.092 miles/h on Bonneville Salt Flats in the US, using two JCB DieselMax engines. It is a record that still stands to this day.
Based on the Staffordshire maker’s Fastrac farm tractor, the record-breaking tractor is powered by JCB’s 7.2-litre, 6-cylinder DieselMax engine produced at their factory in Derbyshire. Capable of delivering 1,000hp and 2,500Nm of torque, the Fastrac had been put on a diet and had its aerodynamics enhanced with the help of Williams Advanced Engineering.
