I set the world’s most boring speed record in a Chrysler Voyager | GRR

I honed by craft in my early days as a cub road tester at Autocar, trying to hang onto all manner of bucking and weaving vehicles as I tried to discover their maximum velocities on the two-mile High Speed Bowl at the Millbrook Proving Ground. Some of those experiences will never leave me and I’ve written about most of them in this slot over time, but looking back from a mercifully very safe distance, there’s a bit of me that’s slightly surprised I’m still alive. The fastest I ever went was an average of a little over 175mph, quick enough to get me into the Guinness Book of Records, but that was in a Ferrari 512TR and was relatively easy. Relative, that is, to doing 171mph in a 964-generation Porsche 911 Turbo with only one hand on the wheel because I had no passenger and I needed the other to operate the stopwatch. Understeering so much it took almost half a turn of lock to keep it in lane. If I’ve been more scared in a road car without crashing it, I don’t recall it.

I’ve helped set records at Talladega which stand to this day, tried to do 200mph with the roof down in a Bentley Continental GTC at Nardo – it reached 198mph – and hit 208mph in a Flying Spur, four up, with those in the back reading the FT at the time. But there is one speed record attempt in which I was involved that I don’t think I have written about since, until now.

When you hear it was at Nardo, a proper 24-hour attempt, supported by the crack Oreca race team, you may wonder why I’ve failed to mention it in the 24 years since it took place. Truth is, I’ve been trying to forget it, not because anything went wrong, but because it is perhaps the single most tedious thing I have done with a steering wheel in my hand. And if you’re now arching your eyebrows, perhaps now’s the time to tell you what I was in: a stock standard diesel-powered Chrysler minivan.

The idea was actually quite a good one. Chrysler had this new Voyager MPV with a new 2.5-litre diesel engine and needed a stunt to show the breadth of its performance. So first they employed a husband and wife couple to see how far it could travel on a tank of fuel. And the answer was 1,077 miles; they must have had an excellent marriage. Then the car would be driven for 24 hours around Nardo to show how fast it could go. And of course they needed a team of world class drivers for this component, so they asked… well not me obviously, but three of their contracted works GT1 Viper drivers, Marc Duez, Ni Amorin and Jean-Phillipe Belloc. But they were smart enough to realise that sometimes things go wrong, so they needed a back-up car just in case. And for that they did indeed call me.

I must have been feeling particularly poor, or the fee must have been unusually high, or both, but said I would so long as I could share the driving with a couple of suitable mates, which duly happened. As for the event itself, I think I must have blanked it because I recall almost nothing. But apparently we did 2,689 miles during those 24 hours at an average speed of 111.8mph, establishing 22 time and distance records for a diesel-powered MPV – if this reads like I’m taking straight from the post-event press release you could not be more correct – covering only 142 fewer miles in those 24 hours than did the 700bhp Viper in the same time period at Le Mans, impeded as it was by things called corners.

If you think that even in a diesel Chrysler minivan averaging that kind of speed for that amount of time couldn’t be too tedious, you could not be more wrong. I think it’s V/Max was around 118mph, so slow we weren’t even allowed into the top lane of the banking, which is reserved for those doing over 150mph. I expect I listened to music but really can’t remember.

Indeed only two memories remain. First was being scolded by our team manager, the great Pierre Dieudonné (triple Spa 24 Hour winner, European Touring Car Champion, 11 times Le Mans competitor and about as overqualified for this job as it is possible to imagine) for drafting the other car four feet off its rear bumper, which I thought was a stroke of genius as I could almost take my foot off the accelerator, save huge amounts of diesel, have fewer pitstops and beat the other car. Actually Pierre thought it quite funny but feared it might invalidate the records.

The second was seeing the other car gradually creep up on me and overtake in the lane below me. Looking out the window of my left-hand-drive car I was a little surprised to see a grinning Duez in the seat nearest me. For a moment I thought I’d failed to realise that theirs was right hand drive before it worked out what was going on. Marc was so bored he’d hopped into the passenger seat while somehow keeping his left foot jammed on the throttle and was steering it from there. It’s probably the funniest thing I’ve ever witnessed someone do on a track, at the most boring event in which I have ever participated. I think he was just trying to keep both of us awake. It worked.