Like most industrial vehicles, tractors were never designed for speed, but like most things with an engine, someone has decided to boost its power output, and see how fast one can really go.
Surprisingly, the world's fastest tractor record is quite a hotly contested title, and was initially set by Top Gear back in 2018. The TV show's record of 140km/h was quickly beaten by Guy Martin, but that still wasn't fast enough.
Armed with the same JCB Fastrac 8000 tractor, Martin returned to Yorkshire's Elvington Airfield with the JCB team and a Guinness official in tow, to try and beat their previous speed.
It's important to know that Guinness requires two consecutive runs in different directions to set a speed record, and takes the average of the two runs as the official record.
While Martin recorded a speed of 257km/h in one direction, he wasn't able to replicate in the other due to the wind factor, so an average speed of 217km/h was recorded at Elvington.
If you are interested in the inner workings of the tractor, you're in luck, as they were released with the record. Under the hood sits a 7.2-litre diesel engine that has been modified to produce around 1000hp (746kW) and a mammoth 2500Nm of torque.
To get the power to the ground more effectively, a six-speed manual transmission has replaced the standard CVT gearbox, and more aerodynamic body panels have been installed to keep it on the ground throughout the runs.
If you couldn't understand what Guy was saying throughout the video, you aren't alone, but here's his closing statement: “It doesn’t feel like a tractor [to drive]. From the outside, it looks like a tractor but it doesn’t sit in and it doesn’t go anything like a tractor. For a tractor it goes like Billy-O."