This Is One Fast Battery-Powered Machine
VW’s ID R was already known to be a super-fast car, but now it has further proof. The car obliterated the EV Nurburgring time. It smashed the record by cutting off 40 seconds from the old record. 40 seconds. Good Lord that’s a lot of time. It’s actually the second fastest car ever to make the lap of the racetrack.
The car manages to lay down a 6:05.3 lap time, which puts the Nio EP9 securely in the rearview. Forget the Nio, the ID R is the new king by a long shot. The only car that’s beaten the ID R’s lap time is the 919 EVO with a time of five minutes and 19 seconds, according to Car Throttle. That means we’ll need to update our list of top Nurburgring lap times.
“For this evolved version of the ID R, the aerodynamic configuration was more strongly adapted to the highest possible speed, rather than maximum downforce,” said François-Xavier Demaison, the program’s tech boss. By not worrying quite so much about downforce, the car was truly able to fly around the racetrack.
The reduction in downforce may have raised top speed, but that would have made the car a little less stable around the corners. Still, it doesn’t seem to have mattered. Romain Dumas, the French racing driver who set the pike’s peak record in the ID R last year, was obviously able to handle it.
