Volkswagen has basically set the standard for electric performance with its ID.R prototype. This car over the course of the last handful of years has set astonishing new overall records at the Pikes Peak International Hillclimb, China’s Tianmen Mountain, and the Goodwood Festival of Speed hillclimb. It also holds the electric record for a lap time at the Nurburgring Nordschleife. It’s fast, like ridiculously fast. It’s not fast for an electric, it’s outright fast.
Ahead of the upcoming Goodwood Speed Week, the Volkswagen ID.R team took the car out for testing at the Bilster Berg track in Driburg, Germany. In the process of testing the car, test driver Dieter Depping managed to trip the timing circuits in an astonishing 1:24.206, which was much faster than any previous track record. With a series of tight corners and short straights, this track encourages off-corner acceleration, which the ID.R has in spades.
Bilster Berg is a 2.565 mile track, meaning the ID.R maintained an average speed of 109.7 miles per hour! Considering how tight the track’s two hairpins are, this is an awe-striking number. Check out this wicked onboard video to see the car positively leap off the slow corners and carry huge speed through the more open corners. The straights are so short, I don’t even think the ID.R reached V-max.
So! Cool!
Obviously not everyone knows the Bilster Berg track. It’s a pretty obscure private test track in Germany that was built less than a decade ago, so lap times aren’t household conversation like perhaps the ‘Ring might be. In any case, let’s try to contextualize this lap record.
Here’s onboard video of the previous track record, set by a Walkenhorst Motorsport BMW M6 GT3 earlier this year. That GT3 with David Pittard at the wheel, managed to set a time of just 1:35.609. Volkswagen beating that record by 11 seconds around a two and a half mile track? Yeah, that’s pretty impressive.
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