There's been a gold standard of American comedies coming out over the last few years with Dodgeball, Anchorman and 40-year-old Virgin all making it onto the grid.

This high-revving gag-machine from the people that brought us Anchorman joins them in pole position thanks in no small measure to Will Ferrell's best comedy performance in an age.

He plays Ricky Bobby, a top devil-may-care driver in America's 200mph NASCAR championships, a sort of crude cross between stock car racing and the Le Mans 24 Hours.

Things couldn't be sweeter. Sponsored to the tune of $20m, he's married to the pneumatic Carley (Bibb) and lives in a lakeshore mansion with his hell-raising sons Walker and Texas Ranger.

However, after a serious crash he loses his nerve and his confidence wilts under the challenge of Baron Cohen's Jean Girard, a gay French F1 driver who sips espresso and reads Camus behind the wheel.

All the comedy basics are in place…but it's the surreal flights of fancy that lift this to another level with Ferrell and John C Reilly as his duplicitous buddy riffing splendidly off one another.

Bobby's bizarelly moronic ramblngs really need their own lap of honour and a particularly out-there meditation on baby Jesus before dinner is crowned with his wacky sons commenting "you made that grace your bitch."

Ferrell, who can so often be a real pain in the exhaust, lends the character a dim-witted charm (he writes on his assistant's head when signing autographs) and fits the role like a tight pair of string-backed driving gloves.

Baron Cohen is strangely compelling (despite his weird French accent) and C Reilly clearly revels in his buddy scenes with the barking Bobby.

It's one of the best recent comedies to take the chequered flag.

Tim Evans