Honda Racing has released a new four-episode docuseries titled "241.428," honoring Gil de Ferran and the closed-course lap record he set in 2000 at California Speedway in Fontana. That 241.428 mile-per-hour lap still stands as the official world closed-course speed record for a race car.
De Ferran, a two-time CART Series champion and Indy 500 winner, died in 2023. The series launched this week on the HRC US YouTube channel and uses people who raced with him and against him to explain why that number has never been touched.
The docuseries pulls in a heavy roster of paddock names. Roger Penske, Zak Brown, Rick Mears, Helio Castroneves, Dario Franchitti, and Tony Kanaan all appear. Their presence signals how far de Ferran's reputation reached beyond his own cockpit.
Kelvin Fu, president of HRC US, described the project as personal rather than promotional. "Gil de Ferran was a big part of the Honda racing family, and he holds a special place in our hearts beyond his major championships and race victories, but 241.428 was an extraordinary achievement," Fu said.
Central to the series is de Ferran's championship-winning 2001 Team Penske Reynard-Honda CART car, now owned by Brown. Honda's Heritage Racing Program restored that Reynard 01I-Honda, the same program Honda launched in August during Monterey Car Week.
That restoration effort fits a wider pattern at Honda, where old race machinery gets treated as working history rather than static memorabilia. The company's IndyCar program has long fed its production engineering, a link explored in Honda's own account of how IndyCar technology reaches road cars.
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Source: Honda
De Ferran set the 241.428 mph mark in October 2000, and nearly 26 years later nobody in Formula 1, IndyCar, or NASCAR has matched it on a closed course. Modern rules that rein in turbo boost, limit downforce, and narrow tire operating windows help keep it out of reach.
Closed-course speed records sit in a different category from straight-line runs, since they demand sustained cornering loads at triple-digit speeds rather than a single flat-out pass. For Honda specifically, the record carries extra weight because de Ferran drove it in a Honda-powered car during the manufacturer's CART era, a period the brand still treats as foundational.
What do you think?
The docuseries arrives as Honda has been marking other performance and safety milestones this year, including becoming the first company in the automotive industry to receive the highest ranking of three stars in the FIA Road Safety Index.
Motor1's Take: The most interesting part of 241.428 is how it freezes a specific moment in racing tech. That lap came from a brief window when power, aero, and tires all worked in the same direction before later rules closed it down. Honda revisiting that story shows just how fast the goalposts have moved.
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Source: Honda
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Extracted and lightly reformatted for readability. · Source: pt