How do you follow up setting an outright record on the Pikes Peak International Hillclimb, one of the world’s oldest and toughest motorsport challenges, with an electric car? For Volkswagen, the answer was easy: set a new electric lap record at the Nurburgring Nordschleife.
Volkswagen ID R smashes electric Nurburgring record
Sure enough, Romain Dumas has done just that in the extensively reworked ID R, with his 6min 05.336sec lap obliterating the previous EV record set in 2017 by Peter Dumbreck in the Nio EP9 supercar. The real question is this: how much does that matter?
The Nurburgring, of course, has become the most famous motoring proving ground in the world. Car firms hone their products there, and the quest to set all manner of increasingly obtuse laps records is becoming increasingly daft. Fastest SUV, anyone?
Still, the Nurburgring’s reputation is such that setting a lap record on it needs little further explanation, while Volkswagen has had to educate people in exactly how impressive its Pikes Peak run was.
Frankly, the ID R was always likely to set an electric lap record: it’s the first true, purpose-built, no-compromise electric car to try. While the EP9 was developed as a performance supercar, and has twice the power of the ID R – with four motors producing 1341bhp compared to the Volkswagen’s 671bhp – it is still essentially a production-based car, one capable of running legally on public roads.
The ID R, by contrast, is a purpose-built competition machine developed from the underpinnings of a Le Mans prototype. That means it’s far more nimble and faster in corners, more responsive and more direct.
So if the ID R was always likely to smash the EV lap record, what did it really prove? Well, here’s some context: the ID R’s time of 6 min 05.336sec lap makes it the second fastest machine to ever lap the historic circuit. The only car that has ever gone quicker around the 12.9-mile ribbon of Tarmac is the 1143bhp Porsche 919 Evo – an extensively reworked Le Mans winner that threw out the rulebook before ripping up the record books. There’s no shame in the ID R not getting close to that car’s 5m 19.546sec time.
Before the 919 Evo, Stefan Bellof’s lap record of 6m 11.13sec had stood since 1983 – in fact, nobody else had come close to it. So simply beating that lap time puts the ID R into a rare and elite space.
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Great
But making a fast electric car go even faster isn't exactly achieving much. I'd be far more impressed if VW could make an EV that weighs less than a tonne, goes 200 miles and costs no more than a regular car. Why not spend the R&D budget doing something useful?
Ok...wait till the Tesla
Ok...wait till the Tesla Roadster comes with its “ Space X option”...so there you Teutonic fanboys...and let’s go around track twice shall we?
Pointless
This laptime is as pointless as the 919 Evo's. Both the VW and Porsche were simply massively modified versions of standard racing cars which went on to prove nothing with their Nurburgring lap times in controlled conditions. At least the Porsche 956 achieved its lap time unmodified while particpating during a race weekend which means more.