Bowling isn't the first thing you think of when it comes to motorsport, but recently NASCAR driver Aric Almirola and professional bowler Jason Belmonte brought the two worlds together.

The unusual collaboration was to attempt 'World's Fastest Strike', which the pair completed with an astonishing 140 mph bowl.

Almirola, a two-time winner in NASCAR's premier Cup series, drove his #10 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford Mustang at Charlotte Motor Speedway, hitting the required speed on the track's start/finish straight. Belmonte, a World Bowling Tour champion, sat in the passenger side of the 550 bhp machine and bowled out of the window.

World's Fastest Strike
World's Fastest Strike

The record attempt wasn't as simple as driving fast and throwing a ball though, Charlotte Motor Speedway's main straight isn't exactly, well, 'straight', with two kinks or 'dog legs' complicating matter. What's more, engineers estimated that for every 40 yards (roughly 36.5 metres) the ball traveled, it had the potential to deviate its course by three feet (approximately one metre), making it critical that Almirola straightened up perfectly after the turns. 

World's Fastest Strike

It took the pair just a handful of attempts to manage to claim the record, smashing through all 10 pins on the fifth attempt, after Belmonte bowled either side of the pins, missing all of them on the first four runs.

The crazy record attempt was part of a partnership between the Stewart-Haas team and Go Bowling which sponsored Almirola at the NASCAR Cup race at Watkins Glen earlier this year.

Gallery: World's Fastest Strike