Royal Enfield motorcycle engineer Stephen Wallis, 43, has secured the Guinness World Record for the fastest battery-powered remote-controlled car, piloting his homemade creation The Beast to 234.71mph at Llanbedr Airfield in North Wales. The £2,000 garage-built machine, powered by four BEAST-class drone motors, accelerates from 0-60mph in 3.5 seconds and reaches 200mph in just 10.5 seconds—faster than a production McLaren F1. Wallis, who was inspired by his 13-year-old son Rory, now faces a new challenge: rival James McCoy has already logged an unofficial 238mph run, pushing Wallis toward his next target of 250mph .
The problem Stephen Wallis set out to solve was not whether an RC car could go fast—hobbyists have chased speed records for years. The problem was whether a motorcycle engineer working part-time from his garage could build something that outpaced million-dollar supercars using salvaged drone components and sheer stubbornness. When his son Rory developed an interest in remote control cars around 2020, Wallis revisited the hobby he abandoned at 17 and discovered the Radio Operated Scale Speed Association, where he watched someone attempt—and fail spectacularly—to use drone motors for land speed. He thought the approach had merit .
What he built is called The Beast, named after the BEAST-class industrial drone motors typically used to carry heavy cinema cameras aloft. The car measures 1.1 meters long, weighs 10.5 kilograms, and is constructed from 3D-printed components, carbon fiber, and aluminum. Its powertrain is radically simple: four drone motors bolted directly to the wheels, which are themselves bolted directly to the chassis. No gearboxes, no belts, no reduction drives. The battery configuration delivers 75.6 volts .
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The basic function of this architecture, from a performance standpoint, is direct drive efficiency. Every watt from the lithium-polymer pack goes straight to the tarmac. There is nothing to slip, nothing to shear. But this simplicity masks extraordinary complexity. Wallis told the BBC that while the mechanical design proved straightforward, the electronics nearly defeated him .
That is where the limitation emerges, honestly acknowledged. In June 2025, during a 196mph attempt, Wallis set all three speed controllers on fire. The current draw at full power was simply too high. His solution was counterintuitive for a speed chaser: he reprogrammed the controllers to deliver less current at lower speeds, reserving maximum amperage only for the brief window of a top-speed pass. This intentional bottleneck sacrifices 0-60mph time—3.5 seconds is respectable but trails a Tesla Model S Plaid’s 1.99 seconds—because this is not a drag race. It is a land speed record campaign compressed into a 1.1-meter carbon fiber tub .
The tires receive the same obsessive attention as the electronics. Wallis operates a tire truing machine in his Rugby garage, shaving foam rubber down to absolute smoothness and slightly reducing diameter for better acceleration and structural survival. The original machine could not handle the abrasion; he upgraded the motor before it could finish the job.
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What makes this matter, ultimately, is not the raw speed—though 234.71mph is objectively absurd for something you hold in your hands. What matters is who built it and why. The innovator of this record is Stephen Wallis, whose childhood tether-car at age 8 planted the engineering seed that grew into two decades of motorcycle development at Royal Enfield in Leicestershire. But the engineer who actually forced the project into existence is Rory Wallis, then 13, whose casual interest in RC cars during lockdown rekindled his father’s dormant obsession. “It kickstarted my route into engineering,” Wallis told reporters. “It was one of those cars connected to wire. To get one without a wire aged 12 was an absolute game-changer” .
Reported by Wales Online, the Guinness World Record attempt occurred in September 2025 at the disused runway where Wallis had first chased speed. His initial run hit 218mph—agonizingly close to the existing 218.5mph record. Then drizzle moved in. With visibility collapsing and his car disappearing into Welsh mist, Wallis blinked against the spray, “using my eyes almost as windscreen wipers,” he told SWNS. The second run registered 234.71mph. He had smashed the record by over 15mph .
But records in this community are ephemeral. Jalopnik reports that competitor James McCoy has already posted an unofficial 238mph pass. Wallis, who spent 18 months and approximately £6,000 including event entries to claim the title, is now targeting 250mph—a speed that would equal Koenigsegg Regera and McLaren Speedtail territory. His white, neon green, and pink livery, chosen because his son insisted anything less garish would vanish at distance, will run again.
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What comes next is the same process that defined the last year and a half: learning, burning, reprogramming, truing, running. Wallis sometimes worked 40-hour weeks on The Beast alongside his part-time engineering role. He told the BBC the original setup could never have reached 240mph. But he studied brushless motor theory, understood how to push past published limits, and now knows exactly what his motors require.
For the rest of us, watching a grown man chase a drone-powered slot car across an airfield, the significance is quieter. The world’s fastest RC car was not built in a Silicon Valley lab or a German wind tunnel. It was built in a garage in Rugby, Warwickshire, by a father and his son, because the son thought going fast looked fun. That is the actual record. The number is just measurement.
