Unless you’re climbing into the cockpit of a fighter jet, hurtling across the deck of an aircraft carrier in an Italian supercar is the next best way to enter the danger zone. Fabio Barone broke the speed record for a car driving on a boat on Thursday. His Ferrari SF90 reached 101 miles per hour on the deck of the Trieste, an Italian Navy aircraft carrier. While the recorded speed still needs to be submitted to Guinness World Records, Barone would be taking the title from himself as he set the previous mark last year.
The festivities aboard the vessel began in the most clichéd way possible with Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone” blaring over the loudspeakers. Despite the music from “Top Gun” getting onlookers hyped up, there were concerns that the record wouldn’t be broken. It had rained on the Trieste’s deck overnight and the crew rushed to dry the surface before the attempt. Engineer Alessandro Tedino told the Associated Press, “If it remained wet, then of course it’s impossible to have the maximum speed and best brakes. It can be very, very dangerous.” Barone had a 754-foot flight deck to work with, including the ski-jump at the end. While the ramp is intended to help STOVL fighter jets take off, it certainly served as a reference point for the braking Ferrari.
Fabio Barone is a persistent Ferrari world record-setter
The Ferrari club president has set various world records behind the wheel of the automaker’s sports cars. Last year, Barone reached 94.4 mph with an SF90 Spider on the deck of the Giuseppe Garibaldi, the carrier that the Trieste replaced. However, most of Barone’s records are for novel high-profile hillclimbs. He ascended Romania’s Transfăgărășan Highway in 2015 with a then-record time of 9 minutes, 13 seconds. Barron then climbed China’s winding Tongtian Road in 2016 with a time of 10 minutes, 31 seconds.
While the automotive world record scene isn’t as competitive as international motorsport, it’s interesting to see people willing to pull off boundary-pushing feats outside the confines of a race track. Earlier this year, Lucid helped a London entrepreneur break the record for the longest EV drive on a single charge with a 749-mile journey between St. Moritz, Switzerland and Munich, Germany.
