Finding the smallest value in a list in R

Question

I have the following list, which I extracted from a function that returns endless car values.I want to find the smallest speed value using R.

car1 <- c(12, 200, "red")
names(car1) <- c("speed", "distance", "color")
car2 <- c(31, 150, "grey")
names(car2) <- c("speed", "distance", "color")
car3 <- c(8, 100, "blue")
names(car3) <- c("speed", "distance", "color")

x<- list(car1, car2, car3)
x

[[1]]
   speed distance    color 
    "12"    "200"    "red" 

[[2]]
   speed distance    color 
    "31"    "150"   "grey" 

[[3]]
   speed distance    color 
     "8"    "100"   "blue" 

Obviously in this example it is visible, but if we had data for 200 cars it wouldn't be. Or endless data that comes from a function. I tried different ways, like

min(x$speed)
min(x[i]$speed)
min(x[[i]]$speed) 

and if conditions, but they didn't work. I would appreciate any help.

Answer 1

as.integer(sapply(x, `[[`, "speed"))
# [1] 12 31  8
which.min(as.integer(sapply(x, `[[`, "speed")))
# [1] 3
x[[ which.min(as.integer(sapply(x, `[[`, "speed"))) ]]
#    speed distance    color 
#      "8"    "100"   "blue"