The bar had been set very high when the Volkswagen ID. Electric R with Romain Dumas at the wheel lowered the Goodwood Climb record of 41.6 seconds Nick Heidfeld’s McLaren MP4/13 in 1999 to a more than astonishing 39.9 seconds. Despite the apparent simplicity of the layout on Lord March’s grounds, it has proven over the years, even with the most seasoned and experienced drivers, that any mistake can add up to a hefty repair bill.
And at that point we were, with a project that in 2021 had already made its debut on the track and that by 2022 had come to have the ex-pilot Formula 1, IndyCar Seris and Le Mans, Max Chilton, willing to shake off the “still faster than Chilton” meme by becoming the fastest driver in history at Goodwood. What was seen from the practices of previous days was already absolutely insane, with the McMurtry Thunderstorm moving at full speed between curve and curve.
We’ll never know how far Dumas would have gone had he managed to complete his attempt on Sunday (he set the record on Saturday), but this time Chilton did get carried away by the thrill of the Shootout for place the new record in 39.08 seconds on this cold day in Great Britain, surpassing the 39.14 achieved the day before by Alex Summers, the Mountain Champion with whom he took turns at the wheel of the McMurtry. The second classified, another rookie, in this case the Porsche 718 GT4 ePerformance, with Richard Lietz at the wheel, who was barely able to close a time of 45.502 seconds, would stay one world away.
What makes the McMurtry Speirling so special?
Many will be wondering How has a car built practically by a very small group managed to be so fast? of people, to the point of beating not only the record of a Formula 1 single-seater at the end of the nineties, but also an electric prototype built expressly by the now closed Volkswagen Motorsport.
With the aesthetics of a batmobile of past generationsthis electric vehicle manages to generate 1,000 CV of power for barely a ton of weight, but where it exploits its potential is precisely in that it is capable of generating up to 2,000 kg of aerodynamic load which it achieves without even going at full speed (it does not depend on the airflow), in this case by exploiting precisely that technical characteristic that provides it with a fan that generates that suction and makes this small prototype stick to the asphalt completely.
His acceleration data is exorbitant, so it was not strange to see him bounce to the first right-hand curve of the course after completing the 0 to 100 km / h in just over a second and a half. The project headed by its founder, Sir David McMurtry, who commissioned a team of former Formula 1 engineers in 2016 designing and building the ultimate high-performance car completed the big feat and made this edition of the Goodwood Festival of Speed even more special after two years marked by the pandemic.