Electric Volkswagen race car sets fastest time for EVs at Nürburgring

Volkswagen has set an electric car record for the fastest lap on the long circuit of the Nürburgring with its ID.R, an all-electric race car. The car took 6 minutes and 5 seconds, a record for electric cars.

According to Volkswagen, the ID.R powered by the two electric motors was more than 40.5 seconds faster than the previous record, set in 2017 by Peter Dumbreck with the electric Chinese NIO EP9 race car. The new lap record for electric cars was set by driver Romain Dumas; he achieved an average speed of 204.96 km/h with the ID.R. He previously broke the record at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in the United States with the ID.R.

Volkswagen’s ID.R, rated at 680 horsepower, is a purpose-built electric supercar and the ‘flagship’ of the ID. series of electric cars, with the ID.3 hatchback to be launched next year. The NIO EP9 has 1341hp and to beat that racing monster, only the standard aerodynamics of the ID.R were not enough.

After extensive tests and simulations, Volkswagen has specially adapted the chassis, energy management and tire choice of the race car for the more than 20 km long German circuit. The manufacturer speaks of a ‘complete makeover’ from the ID.R version that set the record at Pikes Peak. For the Nürburgring version, an aerodynamic configuration was chosen to achieve the highest possible speed, at the expense of maximum downforce.

Incidentally, the ID.R record does not come close to the top time set with a fuel car on the circuit in the Eifel. Timo Bernhard set a time of 5 minutes 19 seconds in the Porsche 919 Evo race car in 2018, the current record time on the 20.8 kilometer round of the ‘green hell’. Bernhard thus smashed the previous record of 6 minutes and 11 seconds, which was already set in 1983 with a Porsche 956.