It turns out that breaking a Guinness World Record for making the longest-ever Hot Wheels track is even trickier than it sounds. Quite apart from the back-breaking hours required to painstakingly connect more than 2,000 pieces of track, there’s the small matter of making sure your miniature Hot Wheels car successfully completes at least one run, from one end to the other, to make sure your ‘longest track in the world’ actually works. And yet efforts to create the world’s longest Hot Wheels track have been raging – unofficially, at least – since the miniature diecast toys were introduced in 1968.
As we were idly researching this subject a few weeks ago (a new 1:64-scale Foxbody Mustang is now available, by the way), one particular name in this oddly fascinating pantheon stood out. An American professional, who, having just completed his first year as NASCAR’s reigning drivers’ champion, started his off-season attempting to break a world record in an official collaboration with Hot Wheels. An attempt that took nearly a full year of planning, and, after an entire day’s effort, looked like it was going to come up short.
November 2019: Joey Logano Teases A Hot Wheels World Record
Hot Wheels. 1:64-scale Ford Mustang GTMattel
On 20 November 2019, 2018 NASCAR Cup Series champion Joey Logano posted a sneak peek of his “off-season project” on Twitter: a Guinness World Record attempt for the longest Hot Wheels track ever built. “Our track is going to be over 1/2 a mile long!” quoted the man himself, teasing the attempt with pictures of the track, mid-build, winding its way around a DeLorean DMC-12, a 2017 Mustang GT, and a rather tasty, 800-horsepower, ‘35 Factory Five Hot Rod in Logano’s own production studio. Bear in mind, this was just three days after he’d finished 5th at a fraught NASCAR 400-miler in Miami.
Joey Logano. 2024 NASCAR Cup Series champion. FordJoey Logano Facebook
And yes, you did read that correctly. So determined have enthusiasts been over the past half-century to create the longest version of Hot Wheels’ famous interconnecting orange plastic track system, half-a-mile is now the absolute minimum required for a record-breaking attempt. And that’s not even including the lengths some fans have gone to create the largest Hot Wheels loop (12 ft 8 in / 3.86 m, set in 2021), the most loop-de-loops (28, set in 2023), and even the largest, full-sized loop (59.7 feet, which rally driver Tanner Foust and Hollywood stuntman Greg Tracy completed at 85 MPH in 2012).
The 2018 Benchmark Logano And Hot Wheels Had To Break
Hot Wheels. 1:64-scale Ford Mustang GTMattel
Though many ‘unofficial’ attempts have been made since the early 1970s (a high-profile, Hot Wheels race around the 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway previewed that year’s Indy 500, but it didn’t occur to anybody to actually measure the track…), the first time the achievement was officially recognized was in July 2002. That year, Mattel Canada Inc, in a collaborative effort with the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada charity, constructed a track 1,650-feet long (502.92 meters), a record that stood – again, officially at least – until October 2016, when a group from the Intuit company in Tucson, Arizona, extended the benchmark to 1,819 ft, 5.8 in (554.6 m).
Then, in September 2018, Mattel Russia celebrated the 50th anniversary of Hot Wheels with a new, 1,838-ft, 3.05-in / 560.30 m distance record in Zaryadye Park, just outside Moscow. Longer even than the height of the Empire State Building, and all the more impressive, considering their car had flipped – then somehow righted itself – halfway down the track.
Ironically, Mattel Russia’s timing couldn’t have been better for Logano. Just two months later, the Connecticut native sealed his first NASCAR drivers’ crown, and, shortly after that, Hot Wheels announced the launch of a 1:64-scale model of Logano’s Ford NASCAR, complete with Pennzoil livery and #22 race number. What better way to promote the new celebratory model than by breaking an appropriate world record still fresh in everyone’s mind…?
The Challenges Involved With A Record-Breaking Attempt
Hot Wheels. Factory Five ’35 Hot Rod Ford TruckMattel
Even for Hot Wheels, however, bringing this world record ‘home’ would be a tall order. Mattel Russia’s existing record, after all, was already longer than an entire lap of the Bristol Motor Speedway (533 meters) at which, fittingly, Logano had already won twice. Moreover, unlike the previous attempt, Hot Wheels and Logano wanted to break the record inside Logano’s 8,000-square-foot production studio.
Rather than one continuous run, therefore, the “over 1/2 a mile long” track would serpentine repeatedly from one end of the studio to the other nearly 20 times. That meant navigating at least 40 hairpin turns, during which the miniature diecast could – and indeed, would, repeatedly – fire itself off into the baseboards. Then there was the job of keeping more than 2,000 sections of track clean and dry (any loss of traction would spell disaster).
The HW team also had 122 booster packs – strategically placed at specific points to ‘fire’ the car back onto the track and keep its momentum going – and 244 batteries to keep charged up. And that’s not even including the logistical nightmare of sourcing the half-a-mile’s worth of track and connectors needed for the only day, 21 November 2019, in which the attempt could be verified. In case you were wondering why the planning stage was so rigorous…
Multiple Fails Thwart Record Attempt
Overseen by a Guinness World Record adjudicator, it seemed at first that the HW team had taken on far more than it could chew, as the miniature Mustang GT (what else…?) either lost too much momentum between ‘speed boosters,’ or took too much speed into the hairpins. Ironically, NASCAR’s previous dalliance with this world record had been similarly fraught. In May 1999, the Kyle Petty Hot Wheels Racing Charity Ride Across America – named after its eponymous founder, an eight-time NASCAR race winner and team owner in his own right – had attempted to make a track 2,863 ft long (872.64 m) in a fundraising bid for children’s charities across the US. Once again, the car failed to go the distance, as the circuitous track – which, in a neat touch, actually spelled out ‘Hot Wheels’ – proved too complex for the 1:64-scale model. Petty, now an NBC analyst and on-site at Logano’s studio in 2019 to cheer on the former champion’s efforts, understood the frustration all too well.
Hot Wheels. Guinness World Record. Joey LoganoJoey Logano (X/Twitter)
After a full day, and too many “fails” to count (Race Service E.P. Andrew Laputka jokingly claimed, through gritted teeth, at least 597 runs were made), the miniature Mustang GT finally, mercifully, made it from one end of the 1,941-ft (591.61 m) track to the other. The record was cemented in appropriately ‘NASCAR’ fashion as the 1:64-scale Mustang, at the end of its run, was propelled up a ramp and through the passenger window of Logano’s (full-sized) Mustang GT for some greatly-earned victory donuts. While that would be a fittingly triumphant place to end the story, sadly, Logano and Hot Wheels would only hold the record for two months…
2020. Logano’s World Record Is Quickly Broken
Hot Wheels. Guinness World Record. 1:64-scale Ford Mustang GTMattel
Incredibly, in January 2020, Alfred Benesch & Company, an engineering services firm based in Pennsylvania, re-set the Guinness World Record with a new track measuring just over 2,176 ft (663.3 m). Though frustrated, neither Logano nor Hot Wheels could hardly fault their ‘rivals,’ since the Pennsylvania effort was driven primarily to promote STEM education to a younger audience. Ironically, Benesch & Co’s record wouldn’t stand for too long either, as 11 months later, despite the outbreak of Covid, Australian radio show hosts Fitzy & Wippa managed an incredible run of more than 2,464 ft 4 in (751 meters), blitzing the US’ best efforts by nearly 300 feet.
Today, the Guinness World Record currently resides with Volkswagen’s official SAIC dealership in China, which constructed a 2,606 ft 10.68 in (794.58 m) track in Shanghai in 2024. One that was also serpentine, interestingly. It’s a record that’s almost 665 feet longer than the now-three-time NASCAR Cup champion Joey Logano managed back in 2019, and, if the last 57 years is anything to go by, is highly unlikely to be the last.