Sunday 15th July 2018

I.D. R first electric car to win the FoS Shootout

Having shattered the electric car record on Saturday, Volkswagen's Pikes Peak winner proved unstoppable on Sunday

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Having smashed the all-time record at Pikes Peak last month, the I.D. R was expected to be among the quickest runners at the 2018 Festival of Speed - and it hasn't let the side down. On Saturday, with Roman Dumas again driving, it whined its way to a 43.05 secs time over the famed 1.1-mile course, shattering the previous record for electric cars.

The fact that it is only 1.45 secs behind the best-ever effort registered by Nick Heidfeld in 1999 driving a McLaren MP4/13, just goes to show how monumentally fast Volkswagen's custom-built hill climber really is. On the official list of Sunday Shootout winners, only Graeme Wight, Jr has gone quicker against the clock - and that was in a similarly specialised machine (the Hill Climb Championship-winning Gould GR51).

And that was practice. On Sunday the I.D. R and Dumas repeated the feat in the final shootout, managing a 43.86 secs run to make it the first electric car to win the event outright. In a sign of the times, it was an electric car in second place, too - the remarkable NIO EP9 with Peter Dumbreck driving, which had briefly held the zero-emission record itself with a 44.45sec time on Saturday (followed by a 44.32 on Sunday). Hard cheese in one sense - but still reportedly the fastest time ever set by a road car on slicks at the Festival of Speed.

 

 

[sidesauce]

I love both the Nio and the VW effort - both spectacular cars. I know, I know, the moaners will be here complaining that they're left 'cold' by these 'soulless' cars but I for one cannot wait to see where the performance of electric vehicles is going to go; no so much in relation to speed as they will crush ICE (if they haven't arguably done so already) but more in terms of battery tech, lightness and general energy efficiency.