By Brian O’Connor

After Brent Hajek raced all 8,000 pounds of his modified F-250 Super Duty^® across the historic Bonneville Salt Flats in August 2011, the results didn’t surprise the farmer from Ames, Okla. When the dust settled he had set two land speed records for production-grade trucks: one at 171 mph, with his mostly stock Power Stroke^® engine, burning truck-stop diesel fuel; and another after a switch to B20 biodiesel fuel, which helped push the truck to an astonishing 182 mph.

“There was a lot more left in it too,” says Hajek of the 6.7-liter Power Stroke V-8 Turbo Diesel engine, his soft-spoken Oklahoma drawl betraying not even an ounce of bravado. “It’s got 195, maybe 200 [mph] in it, but we were all amazed how the Power Stroke adapted to the fuel switch.”

Hajek’s family has maintained a close relationship with the Blue Oval since they began running Boeckman Ford, a dealership in Kingfisher, Okla., in the 1950s. And in 2008 his Hajek Motorsports crew set the record for the world’s fastest sustainable vehicle—a soy-paneled Mustang running on E85 corn-based ethanol that hit 258 mph. “He’s been a strong advocate for us,” says George Goddu of Ford Racing, which provided Hajek with access to a wind tunnel to figure his F-250’s drag coefficient. “He comes across as a laid-back Midwestern farmer, but underneath he’s an intense competitor.”

Hajek’s enthusiasm for Ford—he has a pack of F-250 trucks at work on his soy farm, none with fewer than 200,000 miles on the odometer—is born out of practicality. “Ford has never let me down,” he says. “When you grew up in the middle of nowhere, and when there were no cell phones, you had to pretty well count on what you drove. There was no room for error. You were either driving or walking—and I didn’t like walking.”