VW brought the electric time attack special to this week’s 2018 Goodwood Festival of Speed in an attempt to blitz the event’s hillclimb and set a new record for electric cars.
On Saturday, Romain Dumas — once again donning his lightweight race suit and climbing into the cockpit of the ID R — managed a blistering time of 43.05 seconds. The previous record for an EV was the 47.34 set in 2013 by Jonny Cocker who drove a Lola-Drayson B12 69/EV.
The ID R wasn’t the only electric car to break Cocker’s record. Nio with its street-legal EP9 running racing slicks set a time of 44.61 the same day, showing how much EV development has progressed in only a few short years.
The overall record for all cars at Goodwood remains the 41.6 set by Nick Heidfeld in a McLaren MP4/13 Formula 1 car back in 1999.
On a hillclimb like Goodwood, the ID R had a number of things working in its favor. This is an extremely high downforce car, which means it was able to stick tight through all of the corners. Further, with that instant power and torque delivery (we’re talking 680 horsepower and 480 pound-feet) it could get on the power immediately after ripping through the corners.
Finally, if VW was holding back the power at all during the 12.4-mile Pikes Peak run as a move to preserve battery power, the team didn’t have to worry about that on the much shorter Goodwood hill climb. In other words, this was a fully uncorked ID R on display.
