The top section of the course is the hardest and most dangerous. If you go off, you basically drive off a cliff or go into huge rocks. The road covers permafrost and is extremely bumpy. The bumps change hour by hour as the permafrost expands and contracts. A smooth section can have 3″ heaves a few hours later. Our development focused on being able to take the bumps while maintaining a stable platform for the aero.
Here Dai is at full send after passing some bumps at speed. You can see the chassis is under full aero load here as the splitter is pretty close on deck, the suspension is progressively on the packers here so pitch will not cut off airflow to the diffuser. It is really cool to see how your aero is working in these pictures.
You can see in this picture that Dai is above the clouds. Dai is one brave person. There is a 4000-foot drop here and any off will have probably fatal consequences. You could not pay me enough to go full send here!
Dai going really fast here with no guardrails, a 4000 ft cliff, and a constantly changing bumpy track on an aero dependant chassis, yikes. The car is nicely hunkered down using its aero fully. Dai said that there was absolutely no understeer (which used to be an issue) and the car would have a slight rotation of the back. Our car seemed to be much better over the bumps than the Unplugged performance Plaid. We would have to exploit our advantage here.
As a crew person, this is about the only action you see. What’s cool about electric cars is they get 100% of their torque from zero rpm. Look how the car scoots out of the hole! We ended up being the third-fastest car in our run group in the upper segment. We were quite a bit ahead of both Plaids here. The Unplugged Plaid was quite a bit slower and the Braille Battery Plaid crashed and didn’t post a time.
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I would be looking to either build my own EV fan car, or just buy a McMurtry Spierling to race at Pike’s Peak, because without a doubt this is the recipe for success. There’s no way to argue against 2000kgs of downforce at 0mph! Seeing this car from the start line is like watching a F-18 catapult launch off an aircraft carrier! It’s certainly the fastest car I have ever seen. There are people that think this video was faked and sped up (there’s a full video in the 45 minute timed shootout that shows the fan spooling up before launch which is awesome!)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5JYp9eGC3Cc
I thought that at first too but got to thinking, one thing I am pretty sure of is that the McMurtry Spierling doesn’t have enough battery and cooling to go full send for 10 minutes in the little light chassis. Our model 3 is gutted down to its aluminum unibody and the team has a custom carbon skin but the car still weighs 4000 lbs with the batteries and the additional cooing needed. When doing Time Attack, it’s a one-lap deal with several hours on the charger afterward! The next article will touch upon all the stuff that was done to the car to prevent it from going tilt.
I hear you, Lots of new tech, Only custom solutions. I have heard that McMurtry will compete at PP next year!
For sure I don’t see how you could get enough battery and cooling into that tiny car to run flat out for 10 minutes. If you read the articles we did on the car, you can see that most of the space in the car is to support cooling the batteries, drivetrain, and motor. Maybe they will build a pike’s specific car.
Are you planning on running a front splitter with a raised middle section to reduce pitch sensitivity in the future?
doesn’t need it if you got platform control.
It can do it. You do need an F1 driver for the technical stretches! You will also need an electric socket at the top 😜 or transport down🤞
But their working on modifications to wipe the floor with the Tesla 👍