Twenty-six years after Gil de Ferran turned a 30.255-second lap around the two-mile Fontana superspeedway at 241.428 mph, no driver in any form of motorsport has gone faster on a closed circuit. Honda Racing Corporation USA marked that fact today by releasing a four-episode docuseries, titled 241.428, on the HRC US YouTube channel.
The record came on a qualifying lap for the 2000 CART IndyCar Series race at California Speedway, with de Ferran strapped into a Team Penske Reynard 2KI powered by a 2.65-liter Honda HR-0 turbocharged V8. Regulations have since reined in both chassis and power to keep speeds survivable, which is why the mark has aged without being touched, not just in IndyCar but across Formula 1 and NASCAR as well.
Directed by motorsports journalist Marshall Pruett, the series is organized around four angles: the record run itself, the so-called ‘Renske’ chassis (a heavily modified Reynard that Penske’s engineers had their way with), the Honda turbo V8 that powered it, and a fourth episode built around a recent emotional tribute. That final episode chronicles McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown driving de Ferran’s championship-winning 2001 Team Penske Reynard 01I-Honda at the 2026 Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion at Laguna Seca. Brown purchased that car from Roger Penske and had it restored with help from the HRC Heritage Racing Program. The record-setting 2000 car, a separate machine, is on permanent display at the Honda Collection Hall in Motegi, Japan.
The interview roster reflects how deeply de Ferran was embedded in the sport’s fabric. Roger Penske, Rick Mears, Helio Castroneves, Dario Franchitti, Tony Kanaan, and Brown all appear, sharing memories of a driver who won back-to-back CART titles in 2000 and 2001, took the 2003 Indianapolis 500, and then moved into increasingly influential off-track roles, first as sporting director for the BAR-Honda Formula 1 program, then as a team owner with a factory-backed Acura sports car effort, and finally as sporting director at McLaren under Brown before his death in December 2023.
‘Hearing Gil recount his record-setting run raises the hair on the back of my neck,’ said Kelvin Fu, who took over as HRC US president this month. ‘A powerful reminder of who Gil was.’ Fu’s framing is apt: the docuseries is as much about de Ferran the engineer-driver hybrid as it is about the number itself.
The release also serves as a vehicle for the HRC Heritage Racing Program, which Honda launched during Monterey Car Week in August. The program sells, restores, and provides trackside support for historic Honda and Acura machinery. Episode four effectively doubles as a proof-of-concept for what the program can do: the 2001 Reynard-Honda had been dormant for roughly 25 years before HRC rebuilt the engine and prepared the electronics to put it back on track at Laguna Seca. Brown’s run there was the public demonstration of the result.
The Monterey appearance carried its own hardware: the restored 2010 Honda ARX-01c that won LMP2 at Le Mans took two trophies at the same event, including second in class at the 75th Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. Honda noted it was the first time any Honda received an award at Pebble Beach.
None of which changes the core fact that anchors the series: 241.428 mph, set on a warm California afternoon in 2000, has now outlasted an entire era of regulation changes, two decades of engineering advancement across every major racing series, and the man who set it. That the record is de Ferran’s most durable artifact is the documentary’s quietly devastating premise.
Source: Honda. Images courtesy of Honda.
