McLaren Speedtail vs F-35 jet race: Can a supercar keep up?

As car enthusiasts, we’re no stranger to hearing about and/or watching weird but awesome races between a car and something ludicrous like a fighter jet.

FULL FILM: McLaren Speedtail vs F35 Fighter Jet | Top Gear

It’s the ultimate engineering showdown pitting the best of automotive engineering against the best of aerospace engineering. Again, bombastic, but totally astounding.

Now, the most popular purveyor of aircraft vs car races in recent memory is Top Gear. There was that time that Richard Hammond raced a Bugatti Veyron against a Eurofighter Typhoon on a straight line. There was also that time in Top Gear South Korea where Kim Jin Pyo raced a Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 against an AH1 Cobra.

They're at it...again

So why are we talking about cars vs planes? Well, a few days ago, Top Gear U.K.’s Chris Harris drove a McLaren Speedtail – McLaren’s fastest production vehicle – against a Lockheed Martin F-35 Lighting II.

On the plane side of this race is the F-35 Lighting II variant. It has vertical landing and short take-off capabilities, and it is able to reach Mach 1.6. It’s also worth a whopping 79 million USD. The F-35 uses a Pratt and Whitney F135 which can make as much as 43,000 pounds with the afterburner.

As Chris Harris himself put it, the F-35 is intimidating

On the car side, there’s the McLaren Speedtail. A very limited production hybrid sports car powered by a twin-turbo, 4.0 liter M840T V8 coupled with a parallel hybrid system. With that setup, it can make 1,035 horsepower.

Now get this – this wasn’t a drag race at all but instead it was actually a race on a triangle-shaped track. As such, it began as one would expect with the Speedtail leaving the F-35 at the starting point and on the corners, being a plane and all.

When it comes to straight-line acceleration however, the F-35’s obviously had the chance to stretch out its very powerful jet engines.

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The McLaren Speedtail is no joke too but it will never beat a highly advanced jet like the F-35 on a straight line

So yes, the F-35 won the three turn race with its incredible acceleration with a bit of help from its even more impressive thrust vectoring abilities.

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