{"id":328040,"date":"2025-10-24T02:44:18","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T02:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/328040\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T02:44:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T02:44:18","slug":"2019-guinness-world-record-for-longest-hot-wheels-track-set-by-nascars-joey-logano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/328040\/","title":{"rendered":"2019 Guinness World Record For Longest Hot Wheels Track Set By NASCAR’s Joey Logano"},"content":{"rendered":"

It turns out that breaking a Guinness World Record for making the longest-ever Hot Wheels<\/a><\/strong> 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\u2019s 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 \u2018longest track in the world\u2019 actually works. And yet efforts to create the world\u2019s longest Hot Wheels track have been raging \u2013 unofficially, at least \u2013 since the miniature diecast toys were introduced in 1968.<\/p>\n

As we were idly researching this subject a few weeks ago (a new 1:64-scale Foxbody Mustang is now available, by the way<\/a>), one particular name in this oddly fascinating pantheon stood out. An American professional, who, having just completed his first year as NASCAR\u2019s reigning drivers\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

November 2019: Joey Logano Teases A Hot Wheels World Record<\/p>\n

\"Hot
\n Hot Wheels. 1:64-scale Ford Mustang GTMattel<\/p>\n

On 20 November 2019, 2018 NASCAR Cup Series champion Joey Logano posted a sneak peek of his \u201coff-season project\u201d on Twitter: a Guinness World Record attempt for the longest Hot Wheels track ever built. \u201cOur track is going to be over 1\/2 a mile long!\u201d quoted the man himself, teasing the attempt with pictures of the track, mid-build, winding its way around a DeLorean DMC-12<\/a>, a 2017 Mustang<\/a> GT, and a rather tasty, 800-horsepower, \u201835 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.<\/p>\n

\"2024
\n Joey Logano. 2024 NASCAR Cup Series champion. FordJoey Logano Facebook<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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<\/a> and Hollywood stuntman Greg Tracy completed at 85 MPH in 2012).<\/p>\n

The 2018 Benchmark Logano And Hot Wheels Had To Break<\/p>\n

\"Hot
\n Hot Wheels. 1:64-scale Ford Mustang GTMattel<\/p>\n

Though many \u2018unofficial\u2019 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\u2019s Indy 500, but it didn\u2019t occur to anybody to actually measure the track\u2026), 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 \u2013 again, officially at least \u2013 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).<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 then somehow righted itself \u2013 halfway down the track.<\/p>\n

Ironically, Mattel Russia\u2019s timing couldn\u2019t 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\u2019s Ford<\/a> 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…?<\/p>\n

The Challenges Involved With A Record-Breaking Attempt<\/p>\n

\"Hot
\n Hot Wheels. Factory Five \u201935 Hot Rod Ford TruckMattel<\/p>\n

Even for Hot Wheels, however, bringing this world record \u2018home\u2019 would be a tall order. Mattel Russia\u2019s 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\u2019s 8,000-square-foot production studio.<\/p>\n

Rather than one continuous run, therefore, the \u201cover 1\/2 a mile long\u201d 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 \u2013 and indeed, would, repeatedly \u2013 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).<\/p>\n

The HW team also had 122 booster packs \u2013 strategically placed at specific points to \u2018fire\u2019 the car back onto the track and keep its momentum going \u2013 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…<\/p>\n

Multiple Fails Thwart Record Attempt<\/p>\n

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\u2026?) either lost too much momentum between \u2018speed boosters,\u2019 or took too much speed into the hairpins. Ironically, NASCAR\u2019s previous dalliance with this world record had been similarly fraught. In May 1999, the Kyle Petty Hot Wheels Racing Charity Ride Across America \u2013 named after its eponymous founder, an eight-time NASCAR race winner and team owner in his own right \u2013 had attempted to make a track 2,863 ft long (872.64 m) in a fundraising bid for children\u2019s charities across the US. Once again, the car failed to go the distance, as the circuitous track \u2013 which, in a neat touch, actually spelled out \u2018Hot Wheels\u2019 \u2013 proved too complex for the 1:64-scale model. Petty, now an NBC analyst and on-site at Logano\u2019s studio in 2019 to cheer on the former champion’s efforts, understood the frustration all too well.<\/p>\n

\"Hot
\n Hot Wheels. Guinness World Record. Joey LoganoJoey Logano (X\/Twitter)<\/p>\n

After a full day, and too many \u201cfails\u201d 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 \u2018NASCAR\u2019 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…<\/p>\n

2020. Logano\u2019s World Record Is Quickly Broken<\/p>\n

\"Hot
\n Hot Wheels. Guinness World Record. 1:64-scale Ford Mustang GTMattel<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Today, the Guinness World Record currently resides with Volkswagen<\/a>\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It turns out that breaking a Guinness World Record for making the longest-ever Hot Wheels track is even…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":328041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[1406,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-328040","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-nascar","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115426851191518639","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}