VW Electric Racecar Smashes Two Decade Old Goodwood Record

The Volkswagen I.D. R electric racecar has smashed the 20-year-old record at the annual Goodwood Festival of Speed hill climb. Romain Dumas, the man behind the wheel of this electric racecar, was able to complete the climb on Friday in just 41.18 seconds. That was half a second clear of the previous 41.6 second record set in 1999 by former F1 driver Nick Heidfeld.

Dumas broke his own new record the following day when he made the hill climb using the I.D. R electric racecar in just 39.9 seconds. This performance follows another record-breaking run from Dumas last month when he broke the electric vehicle record at the famous Nürburgring in Germany.

It’s a worthy achievement but one has to keep in mind that the I.D. R has been explicitly designed for venues such as Goodwood. The racecar isn’t put under as much stress as the one Heidfeld used to set his record. The 1999 run was done in a 780-horsepower V10 F1 car which was considerably more challenging to speed up the hill all those years ago.

Dumas tried the hill climb with the I.D. R last year as well. It did set the hill climb record for an all-electric vehicle and posted the third fastest time overall. It has smashed the main record this time around.

https://twitter.com/fosgoodwood/status/1147556466028662785

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: General
Tags: electric vehicles, volkswagen