Whichever way you cut it, there's a heck of a lot of attention on the Jaguar I-Pace at the moment. Even on PH, the reveal story attracted nearly 250 comments, and the drive comfortably more than 300. People are interested, and want to know more. Perfect time to introduce the Laguna Seca lap, then...
Alright, so the timing is a little out. A less commercial, plainer version of this vid originally appeared Motor Trend's channel as an unlisted upload on August 18th; it was picked up and then the subject of some discussion on PH last month, in fact. But it was only released publically on the channel over the weekend, complete with more than its fair share of Jag endorsement for this HSE First Edition. Get beyond that - the lap begins at 2:00 in the 'full' video - and there's an entirely electric lap of Laguna Seca, so often the location for incredible combustion engined feats, to watch and analyse.
Of course it's quiet, and the sense of relaxation is not helped by Randy Pobst's rather laid back style, though there's decent speed and composure from what we can see here. Certainly there have been cars less at home on track. How long it might last flat out on track is rather a different matter, of course, but maybe we'll discuss that another time...
The time? 1:48.18, placing it on Fastest Laps leaderboard just behind an Evo IX time of 1:47.93 and ahead of a previous generation Focus ST, Mk7 Golf GTI and - it says here - a 997 Carrera S, although 1:50 seems a little slow.
Anyway, the lap is here, it's new and it's different, so it seemed worth sharing. Both versions are below, just in case you want to cut through the blurb and straight into the lap.