Verdammt! Stripped Tesla Bests Taycan’s Nürburgring Time

This is an excellent example of racing improving the breed. In order to pull this off, Tesla is having to address all sorts of cooling concerns that were problematic in earlier versions of the Model S. They're also updating the previous-gen motors. I'm pretty sure this is a three-motor version of the car which isn't currently available, but it certainly could be in the future. It's highly unlikely Tesla is doing this with a car you can buy today, but that's okay in my books. They're pushing the limits.

It's hard to have a Tesla conversation without getting all tied up with personal opinions about Elon Musk, but if you can manage to ignore that it's pretty darn exciting. A good 'Ring time is a lot more applicable to most of us than a run up Pike's Peak, and it's great to see the EVs finally getting to this point.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Not only that, but 20+ seconds is a healthy bit of time, even at the lengthy Nordschleife.  And some outlets are reporting that the time may have been set in traffic. Should make for an interesting official time. 

A good news month for Teslas on the performance front, as a gutted Tesla also completed Drag Week, making it the first electric vehicle entered and it also knocked the Tesla quarter mile record back a few hundredths. 

Jordan Rimpela said:

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Not only that, but 20+ seconds is a healthy bit of time, even at the lengthy Nordschleife.  And some outlets are reporting that the time may have been set in traffic. Should make for an interesting official time. 

20 seconds is a freaking eternity. Imagine the Tesla whooshing past the start/finish line and then start counting down a Twenty-Mississippi.  Taycan wouldn't even be in sight when the Tesla finished, and without the engine noise you may even be able to hear actual crickets.

Your move, lotus evija.

As much as the power of electrics is impressive, I'd still rather have a new or old, (insert just about any screaming fuel powered vehicle). 

Up to and including this.

Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s revealed tomorrow it was a stripped out interior, on super soft tires.  By then, the ‘damage’ is already done, and everybody will have moved on.

I will believe it when they post the lap and the modifications but there is no freaking way it did that on the tires they ship the car with, and at factory weight. They beat the XE Jag by what 0.7 seconds at LS (unofficial) and that did a 7:18 on cup 2's with a fully stripped interior at the ring with a pro driver and multiple attempts over weeks. 

To put it in context that is 12 seconds slower then a Nissan GT-R Nismo  which ran a 7:08.68 in litteral perfect conditions.  The time difference is the same between the Porsche and the Tesla as the Tesla is to a Radical SR8. WE are talking orders of magnitude. 

It's not going to be a car that's right off the showroom floor.

The tires are off-the-shelf street tires, they're just not currently on the option sheet. That's easy enough to fix if you want to pick that particular nit. The likelihood of the powertrain being a prototype for the next generation is very likely, and that's a much bigger deal. That doesn't mean they didn't do the time, though, and in doing so they're pushing the boundaries.

The Chiron that set the "production" car record at 300+ mph was heavily modified. Maybe they are going to release a version that matches that spec, but to call it a production car record at this point is laughable.

The Civic Type R that set the FWD 'Ring record had a cage for safety (though the weight was offset by removing a few things) and stickier tires. That's about as close to truly production as I have seen. 

This Tesla was no doubt modified, but if Elon is responding to Porsche's whining about heat management issues by fixing said issues on newer models, I am all for it!

pinchvalve said:

The Chiron that set the "production" car record at 300+ mph was heavily modified. Maybe they are going to release a version that matches that spec, but to call it a production car record at this point is laughable.

They are, the Super Sport 300+ model:

https://www.motor1.com/news/369478/bugatti-chiron-super-sport-300/

Keith Tanner said:

The tires are off-the-shelf street tires, they're just not currently on the option sheet. 

Correct - same as the Laguna lap. Goodyear Eagle F1 Supercar 3R in an already existing fitment.

I must admit I was skeptical, but they appear to have pulled it off. Impressive!

So modifying a car to significantly increase both the grip and the power to weight ratio significantly lowers lap times...Who knew?

While it's very impressive for what it is, and represents some real progress from Tesla, from a manufacturer standpoint I still have to give more credit to the cars that do it as delivered off the showroom floor.  Thus the Taycan is still the more impressive 'production' car time to me.  Adding better (typically R-comp) tires is the same as flashing a tune that cranks the boost in my opinion.  Either way it's 'just' something off-the-shelf available from somebody or another, but if your car needs that to 'beat' the competition, it should have been spec'd that way in the first place.

Road & Track’s article states:

• gutted interior
• carbon ceramic brakes
• wider tires along with over fenders to accommodate the wider wheels. 
• rear gurney flap
• 3 motors (2 rear/1 front)

I don’t care, I think its awesome. 

.....really?  A highly modified and stripped out Tesla with an extra motor and flared with big tires beat a stock Porsche EV?  ...No way!  More interesting to me are production car capabilities on ring.  

Just call it the GT3 and put it on sale next week.

I like that they care, doesn't matter why. EV's that make good track cars are good for all of us. 

Not exactly a production car, having 50% more motors than anything they sell off the shelf and all, but if they make a production version of it all will be forgiven.

Individual wheel motors at the rear would be a nice improvement over a diff. I'm guessing they made a new unit to replace the diff housing/powertrain coolant manifold piece to run individual wheel motors and fix the cooling system design flaws at once.

Why all the complaining? This is great for the world of Motorsport just as Keith stated. Innovation and competition moves things forward. 

Someday these will eclipse ICE cars and I will be sad. 

Error404 said:

Someday these will eclipse ICE cars and I will be sad. 

I think that day is here in many more ways than not. 

Slippery said:

Error404 said:

Someday these will eclipse ICE cars and I will be sad. 

I think that day is here in many more ways than not. 

From a driving perspective, EV's are (or can be) freaking great. Bring prices down and range up and I'm sold. 

Slippery said:

Error404 said:

Someday these will eclipse ICE cars and I will be sad. 

I think that day is here in many more ways than not. 

You're not wrong. I drove my gf's '13 Focus and it is very modern (for it's time) and they had already managed to suck the driving experience out of it with gratuitous features and styling. 

There are people that love all the features, people that love them because they think they have to have them, and there's luddites. I fall firmly and happily in the luddite category. Turning a key, hearing the character of an engine, driving instead of stabbing at touchscreens or yelling at your digital assistant.... I'm gonna miss it. 

In case anyone wanted to read the R&T article:

Road & Track

I am waiting for the dash cam video like Laguna seca ......

I am sure that the Porsche was not taken off the showroom floor and raced !   OK it was not even for sale when they did the Ring "record"

Lets have an April 1st race ,  2 rich guys buy a   showroom Porsche and a Tesla ,  changes tires and then drives down the  Autobahn to the ring for a  race for Pink slips  :)

Maybe even a Pay for View !

GameboyRMH said:

Not exactly a production car, having 50% more motors than anything they sell off the shelf and all, but if they make a production version of it all will be forgiven.

Individual wheel motors at the rear would be a nice improvement over a diff. I'm guessing they made a new unit to replace the diff housing/powertrain coolant manifold piece to run individual wheel motors and fix the cooling system design flaws at once.

It's a prototype of what's coming, I think. Given the pace of development in the EV world, the Model S is a dinosaur. Heck, just look at the motors for the S vs the 3, you can see they're a generation newer. I expect we'll see a production version of the 3-motor S to keep Tesla at the top of the luxo-EV pile.

Keith Tanner said:

It's not going to be a car that's right off the showroom floor.

At our last autocross, a Tesla 3P from way down in B Street came within 0.080" of a well-driven C6 Corvette running in SSM for fastest raw time of the day.  The Vette was driven by one of our fastest guys.

Really cool, I'm curious how the lack of engine noise changes feedback, you could hear more sound from even quiet tires chasing the limits. 

Oranges to Kumquats. Not a comparison. Good marketing, and hopefully pushes tesla to fix their dumpster fire of a cooling system. A net positive, but not exactly a point for either side for carbuyers imho. 

Nugi said:

Oranges to Kumquats. Not a comparison. Good marketing, and hopefully pushes tesla to fix their dumpster fire of a cooling system. A net positive, but not exactly a point for either side for carbuyers imho. 

Funny thing is that Tesla is not comparing anything, at least not advertising it. This was timed by journalists that happened to be at the track. Tesla was not allowed to do timed laps, sounds like they will do that in the coming week though.

I myself like Tesla for what they have accomplished in such a short amount of time, I do not consider myself a fanboy or own one of their cars. I am curious about them though. What drives you to say "dumpster fire of a cooling system"?

I probably see close to 20 or 30 Teslas a day here in south Florida, never seen one go up in flames ... I know it happened in Asia and maybe a few other cases, but given how many cars they sold it does not seem to be that big of a problem.

Thinking more about this, maybe I am a fanboy since I want them to succeed and keep making cool cars.

Made in the US, the first to make a viable EV and really looking at making cars from -I think- a different perspective.

I will probably be one of the first ones to put a deposit for a model Y.

The Model S has historically had trouble managing heat during track use, dropping power fairly quickly. I'm assuming this is the "dumpster fire" Nuqi refers to. Most EVs do have trouble with this.

Tesla, like them or not, has revolutionized the EV landscape. They're the ones that turned them from weird little econoboxes to legitimate cars and even objects of desire. We wouldn't have the Porsche EV without them.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Ok, I see. But I don't think Tesla intended for the Model S to be a trackable car.

Porsche on the other hand came right out of the gate with a car intended to be used as a Porsche ... they even have a 2 speed gearbox. I love Porsches, but they have a way to go compared to Tesla, starting with getting their charger network setup and going. 

In reply to Slippery :

For normal driving, the cooling system is fine. On a track, it tends to overheat within a hot lap or two. But the context is track driving, so seems relevant. 

That said, I agree with all the comments celebrating any competition. I was perhaps myopic.  It does absolutely improve things, in the long run. 

My only gripe with Tesla itself, beyond some 'optimistic' marketing, is their IMHO blatant illegal attempts to prevent and deter customer and 3rd party service and repair. Meanwhile their own service and repair often leave much to be desired, with parts availability a constant issue. That alone, as a grassroots person, destroys almost all of my admiration for the tech. I freely admit bias against tech that denys what I feel is a right to ownership. /rant

My whole point is, a good stock (with maybe tires/tune) comparison seems somewhat fair, while comparing prototypes seems a bit like waving dicks in the wind. As a consumer, I cannot draw any useful data from what I have seen. 

In reply to Nugi :

I agree that Tesla not selling spares to end users is a negative, but I am sure the aftermarket will be on it once the numbers start making sense. 

So have we talked about how the 7:23 lap is still blistering in terms of just about all cars ever?

Isn't the production car lap record like 6:45 going to some $1M hypercar?

What does a c7 zo6 do it in? M3? The Amg clkgg 453231 4 matic zomg German manliness black edition?

Edit: Ok looked up the Wikipedia page. 7:23 basically matches a c6 zo6. Faster than any BMW on the list. Faster than the Pagani Zonda. Faster than the non nismo GTR. Only bested by some race spec porsches, vipers, aventadors, mercedes.

Not too shabby.

In reply to Slippery :

They won't even sell you a service manual. In the one state it is required by law that they provide access, they rent access to it for hundreds a day. If parts was my only gripe, i would be a huge hypocrite. 

Hey wait - I thought only BMWs could have dumpster fire cooling systems?

Jordan Rimpela said:

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Not only that, but 20+ seconds is a healthy bit of time, even at the lengthy Nordschleife.  And some outlets are reporting that the time may have been set in traffic. Should make for an interesting official time. 

Sub 9s in traffic is balls out driving at the ring

Even in light traffic

I like the look of the widebody/gurney flap and the larger openings in the front

This is good. But it seems like they've made some significant changes too that basically make this car a ringer (pun intended).

Wider body, rear spoiler, larger openings in front, lighter wheels, much stickier tires, stripped interior, and some crazy prototype powertrain. The legitimate way to do this is to run it with nothing but safety improvements. If you have to cage the car for safety reasons that's fine, but gutting the interior, putting non-stock tires on it, custom software that the customer won't be able to buy, carbon brakes, etc makes this car nothing more than an experiment/marketing exercise. That doesn't mean it isn't cool and impressive, just that the run should have an asterisk if it's not a production spec car.

The Model S Performance already makes 762hp/723 ft-lbs, so this thing could easily be over 800hp/800tq. And that full amount of torque is always there. It will cost as much as a house. It should absolutely be damn fast with numbers like that.

The Taycan is $150k starting with options up to $241k. If Tesla can knock 20 seconds off by the mods listed above with the interior back in it and still be 1-2 seconds faster than the Porsche then sell it for under $200k i think they have a winner.

And that picture of it looks tits. Amazing what a set of wheels, wing and arches does to a car.

We all know the difference a set of tires can make on any car when it comes to lap times, and putting super sticky tires on a mass produced car doesn't make sense since such a tiny portion of the population will utilize it, so given that this is to just prove a point against a *specific competitor* they should at least equalize the tires by using the same tires (not necessarily same size).  I don't buy the argument that all cars should be run on "production" tires.  (Side note, I also get frustrated when I see lap times from magazines using OE tires, which almost never show the true capabilities of the vehicles on an equal footing, e.g., same tires).  

The other modifications - stripping the interior, etc. do seem over the top a bit if they wanted to make it have some semblance of an apples to apples comparison.  

But for Tesla, there wouldn't be a Taycan.  I love building, swapping, tinkering, modifying and boosting internal combustion engines, but we['re all going to have to get used to the smell of ozone rather than burnt fuel as the marker of a hot rod.

I just want to get the damn MR2 v6 swap done before it becomes completely humiliated by a souped up electric mobility scooter.

BrianC72gt said:

but we['re all going to have to get used to the smell of ozone rather than burnt fuel as the marker of a hot rod.

If you smell ozone that means there's arcing going on inside the motor, and arcing is the EV equivalent of detonation.

The saving grace for internal combustion engine swaps is that compared to doing an electric conversion, it's actually achievable (see: affordable) for the majority of people out there.

Just for Tesla-sized battery packs, Rich Rebuilds priced it at what, $3k a pack? And to get roughly the same range you needed three of them, IIRC. Each motor is another couple thousand, give or take. So on and so forth.

There's the option for buying salvaged Teslas, but enjoy paying that premium and having to use the majority/all of said Tesla electrical parts.

Edit: I would absolutely love to do an electric conversion for my wagon if I could afford it.

And I still console myself with the notion that I'm avoiding the conveniently overlooked environmental cost of creating that expensive, shiny, new  electric vehicle.  Or even gas one.

The environmental impact of vehicle creation for my aging fleet gets amortized over many more years than most owners with a disposable mindset.  Swapping in newer drivelines (with better performance ) is an act of environmental stewardship. 

Yeah, yeah, that's the ticket.  I'm mf'ing Mother Theresea.

Duke said:

Keith Tanner said:

It's not going to be a car that's right off the showroom floor.

At our last autocross, a Tesla 3P from way down in B Street came within 0.080" of a well-driven C6 Corvette running in SSM for fastest raw time of the day.  The Vette was driven by one of our fastest guys.

 

Same thing this weekend at my local Corvette club auto-x. A Model S (p100d?) on R71s set FTD handily beating well driven Z06s, and smashing my stock Focus RS.

I think some have missed the important point here. That being: they did a super cool track-prepped widebody Tesla with extra motor.

Those flares are sweeeet.

Grantsfo said:

.....really?  A highly modified and stripped out Tesla with an extra motor and flared with big tires beat a stock Porsche EV?  ...No way!  More interesting to me are production car capabilities on ring.  

The Porsche wasn’t a production car either guys.  It also had a cage in it.

Saw this on IG today. Still don’t know how to embed videos

Tesla breaks down at Nurburgring while Taycan passes by :)

Hey look, product development! That's how it works.

Keith Tanner said:

Hey look, product development! That's how it works.

Oh, believe me I know how this works. I am on Tesla’s team, I am a fanboy after all like I said lol. 

Just thought it was funny. 

Now I want to see someone riding a rivian roller skate around the ring for time. No vehicle body required. Just the roller skate and maybe a handle like on horse saddles.

That reminds me of GM driving the Fiero without body panels back in the day.

Keith Tanner said:

Just call it the GT3 and put it on sale next week.

And that will ensure it never sells below MSRP (even with 30k miles on it).

The new Tesla Roadster will be a more direct comparison for the Porsche.   

Couple places online are now reporting that the 7:20 time is extrapolated from the best segments they recorded across multiple laps. Not a single lap record and not a recorded lap record. Hahaha sorry if that’s true that is the funniest thing I have heard all week. 

By that hat definition I can do a 1.23 at leguna  seca  

In reply to wearymicrobe :

The 7:20 was never timed by Tesla. They were not allowed to time anything during those laps. 

That was measured by people that are not affiliated with them, from the trackside. 

In reply to nimblemotorsports :

Agreed - If the production version of that car is anywhere near the published specs, it should do well under 7:00 at Nurburgring. 

nimblemotorsports said:

The new Tesla Roadster will be a more direct comparison for the Porsche.   

The berkley it will, that roadster will Smoke the taycan. 

Carbon said:

nimblemotorsports said:

The new Tesla Roadster will be a more direct comparison for the Porsche.   

The berkley it will, that roadster will Smoke the taycan. 

The roadster that they hyped a ton (and took millions in interest free deposits for) back in 2017?

The roadster that Musk says is a lower priority than basically all of their other projects (some of which we haven't even seen)?

The Roadster that's still at least 2 years away, even with Tesla's notoriously optimistic time tables?