Skip to main content

New world record for fastest car on ice

A new world record for the fastest car on ice has been set this week by Nokian Tyres' test driver Janne Laitinen who drove 331.610 km/h (206.05 mph) on the Gulf of Bothnia in Oulu, Finland.
March 1, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
A new world record for the fastest car on ice has been set this week by 205 Nokian Tyres' test driver Janne Laitinen who drove 331.610 km/h (206.05 mph) on the Gulf of Bothnia in Oulu, Finland. The record was broken on a 14-kilometre ice track in freezing conditions and the car, a 23 Bentley, was equipped with Nokian Hakkapeliitta 7 studded tyres (255/35R20 97 T XL).

The Guinness World Records organisation outlines detailed rules for ice driving world records. The time for the one-kilometre distance is taken for driving in both directions of the track, and the world record time is the average of these two results. The vehicle takes a flying start and the Bentley was fitted with a parachute for emergency stops as well as a roll cage and a spoiler, although in other respects it was a standard model. The ice has to be natural and it may not be roughed up or treated with any chemicals. The tyres must be commercially available and approved for road traffic in the country in which the record attempt takes place.

Nokian Tyres developed the world's first winter tyre for raw, subzero conditions back in 1934. Two years later, it introduced the Hakkapeliitta, designed for northern winters and today one of the world's best-known winter tyre brands. The world's northernmost tyre manufacturer tests and develops new additions, customised for different uses, for its winter tyre family at its own test facilities in Ivalo, 300 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • New Zealand woman sends texts while ‘sleep-driving’
    August 15, 2013
    A New Zealand woman, who drove for hundreds of kilometres while asleep at the wheel, sending texts from her mobile phone along the way, is to be forbidden to drive, according to police. Police received an emergency call from a friend concerned the woman had gone out in her car after taking sleeping medication. Told that the woman had been sleep-driving ten months previously and had a fondness for the beach, police ordered patrol cars to keep a lookout for her silver hatchback and began tracking her via her
  • Sampo Hietanen: “Most likely you're going to be the ‘magnificent corpse’ out of all this”
    August 21, 2024
    From the pitfalls of being first in the market, to putting your effort into creating an ecosystem, and the difficulties in gaining critical mass, Sampo Hietanen tells Adam Hill how much he’s learned from the rise and demise of MaaS Global
  • Solar studs a cost-effective alternative to street lighting?
    July 30, 2012
    Road traffic accidents have an enormous impact on society in terms of human loss, pain and suffering and a significant cost to the economy, the individual and their families. Accident rates on South Africa's roads are among the highest in the world and cost the country in the region of $163 million each year. The former head of the Department of Transport (DoT), Dr Kwazi Mbanjwa, described the situation as "carnage on our roads", with over 500,000 accidents and 10,000 fatalities per annum and the number of
  • Interoperability: towards the new frontier
    October 22, 2018
    After six years of intensive research, testing and negotiation, the US tolling industry is well on its way to groundbreaking results in the effort to establish regional - and eventually national - toll interoperability, says IBTTA’s Bill Cramer. Interoperability has been a high priority on the US tolling industry’s agenda for more than a decade. But several factors made it a uniquely complex issue to resolve - including the number of agencies involved, the significant investments those agencies had already