This is a new car from Hennessey. It’s named after an F5 tornado. That should give you an idea of what it’s all about.

Yep, it’s another insanely fast supercar from the small, Texan car manufacturer. You’ll have no doubt heard of Hennessey’s last big-hitter, the Venom GT. That was based on a Lotus Exige, but it was tuned and modified to the point that it developed 1,224 bhp and could top 270 mph.

That means, technically, it’s the fastest production car in the world – but it doesn’t hold the record because it only did the run one way. That means the Bugatti Veyron SuperSports, which had a Guinness judge oversee a there-and-back top speed run, is still the overall speed king. Oh, and the new Bugatti Chiron will do a top speed run early next year.

Enter the Hennessey Venom F5.

Designed as a successor to the Venom GT, it’s been built from scratch, meaning Hennessey hasn’t had to base its engineering around the shape of an old Lotus. The panels are carbon-fibre, the advanced aerodynamics are bespoke, and the chassis is a carbon tub.

All of this means that it knocks the old Venom GT’s drag coefficient of 0.44 Cd out of the park. The F5’s drag coefficient is 0.33 Cd, meaning that sane levels of power could propel it towards a theoretical top speed of 300 mph (yep, 480 km/h).

Well, we say sane. But actually, the F5 is packed with 1,600 bhp – courtesy of a bespoke 7.4-litre, twin-turbo V8. And there’s 1,300 lb ft of torque. This is fed through a seven-speed paddle-shift gearbox, with safety provided by a GPS-based traction control system.

Want to know what that does for acceleration? Well, you won’t get anything as banal as a 0-100 km/h time from Hennessey when discussing the F5. Instead, we’re told that this car will do 0-300 km/h in under 10 seconds and 0-400 km/h in under 20 seconds. In comparison, the Chiron will do 0-400 km/h in 32.6 seconds (!).

Scared? So are we.