The I.D. R was always the strong Goodwood favourite off the back of its success at Pikes Peak and Romain Dumas – on his first visit to the hill – completely delivered.
On the Sunday afternoon shootout he drove the all-electric hillclimb machine to a time of 43.86 seconds. It wasn’t even an all-out attack – an earlier off prompted Dumas to take things easy to secure the win rather than chase the overall record.
In fact, his Saturday run ended up being the quickest time of the weekend as he put in a time of 43.05 – just 1.45 seconds off of Nick Heidfeld’s all-time record, and the third quickest Goodwood run in the 25 years of the event. Oh yeah, and of course, it’s the fastest time ever by an electric car, and looks exactly as spectacular as you’d hope.
The I.D. R wasn’t the only electric car in the mix though; the second fastest car was also battery-powered. The NIO EP9 road car (albeit running on slick tyres) set a time of 44.32 seconds. The next fastest car – the Judd-powered BMW E36 (a car built for hillclimbing) was over two seconds slower – a pretty big margin given that the course is only just over a mile long.
The theme of modern tech continued earlier in the weekend when the Roborace car became the first driverless vehicle to complete the climb.
Yeah, the future’s already here.
