You wouldn’t be alone in finding all the pomp and pageantry of Monterey Car Week - or certainly the bits that are best known - a little stifling. So here’s something to rouse you from your stupor, proof that exciting stuff does happen on four wheels in California during August. Koenigsegg has set a new lap record for homologated production cars at Laguna Seca with a Jesko Attack. And, as might be expected, it’s flippin fast.
1:24.86 is a little hard to contextualise with a track not as famous as some others for records, but it means the ‘egg is almost three seconds faster than a McLaren Senna (1:27.62) around the lap. Around a sub-90-second lap, that’s enormous. More importantly for record setting boasts, the Jesko pipped the 1:25.44 laid down by a Czinger 21C in 2021. So the definition of homologated road car is really being stretched to breaking point, yes, though the numbers don’t lie. Nothing else even comes close to that pair that can also be used on the public highway: a fully Weissach Packed Turbo GT Taycan was 1:27.87, a 991 GT2 RS 1:28.30.
Still, consider the Jesko’s spec and it’s not entirely surprising. Attack is the track focused version of the 1600hp V8 hypercar (where Absolut is the top speed car), with up to a tonne of downforce and hollow carbon wheels. The lap itself is a blur of revs and gearchanges, distances all those vids and games taught you were between corners just vanishing. Interestingly it’s been claimed by Christian von Koenigsegg that neither car nor test driver Markus Lundh had ever been to Laguna Seca before - some achievement for the first time. Makes you wonder if they could go faster still, in fact. And where the next record might come from.
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