How a little electric storm thundered to Goodwood's hillclimb record

Nothing has ascended the Duke of Richmond’s 1.16-mile driveway as fast as the McMurtry Automotive Speirling, which last Sunday broke the Goodwood Festival of Speed hillclimb record. Ex-Formula 1 driver Max Chilton smashed the timed shootout competition and both official and unofficial benchmarks with his 39.08-second run aboard a machine that looks not unlike an example of Michael Keaton’s Batmobile that has been washed on too hot a setting.

If you haven’t yet seen it, please go and watch the incredible videos of this new yardstick, plus the side-by-side edit with Nick Heidfeld’s now-toppled 1999 run aboard the McLaren MP4/13. Aside from being a slice of history, the footage boggles the mind for two reasons.

One, this diminutive engineering feat looks different. Were it powered by an internal combustion engine, it looks more like the front-engined Nissan LMP1 wildcard machine or a Panoz. Not a mid-ship thoroughbred. Two, it behaves so differently in the way it generates its enormous speed. Rarely has the over-used comparison to a Scalextric slot car been so apt. The all-electric McMurtry is glued to the road. And, at least at Goodwood, there’s very little in the pipeline that might beat it. F1 cars included.

McMurtry Automotive is the eponymous company set up by Irish billionaire businessman and inventor Sir David McMurtry. In 2016, he assembled a crack team of ex-F1 engineers and gave them a design brief: “demonstrate to the world the superiority of small”.

This is more pertinent than ever, given the sustainability benefits of EVs are currently being showcased by building excessively heavy and large SUVs that consume more materials and require more energy. The current zeitgeist is a baffling inherent contradiction.

The Speirling rights this wrong and is led by engineering excellence and a razor-sharp focus - meeting parameters set only by the team - rather than the need to comply with looming legislation.

McMurtry’s mechanical design engineer David Turton explains to Autosport: “The reason why with an electric car you have to be ultra-focused on your end use case is because you can't afford to carry around any excess battery. That will make it larger and then you’ll carry around a bit too much drag or a bit too much weight. So, if the aim is to go around a Grand Prix circuit as fast as possible with one driver, what we built answers that question.”

The McMurtry Speirling may tip the scales at 1000kg, but everything's tightly nestled in a small package

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

That reveals a great deal about the Speirling. It tips the scales at under 1000kg, although that is still considerable given the tiny footprint. Its size equates to that of a 1960s grand prix car and like the cigar-tube-shaped racers, employs a very small frontal area to slip through the air. That dictates the batteries, “a significant proportion of the car’s weight”, are tightly packaged in the sidepods and underneath the driver’s legs to keep the weight low down, in-board and ensure the dimensions remain tight.

The compactness means, especially where the narrow Goodwood course is involved, that there’s wiggle room through treacherous Molecomb corner or when threading the needle between the hay-bales and the Flint Wall. There’s asphalt to spare either side. It also means the Speirling cuts through the air incredibly efficiently. The low-drag body shape allows very high top speeds to be achieved very quickly.

In ‘Silverstone spec,’ the speedo climbs north of 200mph. For Goodwood, a hillclimb gearbox was used to set a top speed of 150mph. Chilton hit 149mph on his glory run. And while that did tailor the Speirling’s set-up to the demands of FoS somewhat, keep in mind the Volkswagen ID.R posted its 39.9s run in 2019 using a diet 8kWh battery rather than its original 45kWh configuration for Pikes Peak. For good measure, the McMurtry retained its usual full fat 60kWh unit.

Turton, formerly of Mercedes High Performance Powertrains, continues: "A lot of electric cars up to this point have taken a combustion car and retrofitted an electric powertrain. They're traditionally quite long and wide. You pay a weight and drag penalty for that. But any extra weight and drag mean your battery pack has to be bigger so your car gets bigger. We've done the inverse.

"We've got really good low-speed grip. Our apex speeds at low speed are very good. And then because it's very low drag, you get up to your Vmax fairly quickly" David Turton

“We're creating a nice snowball effect where you make things lighter and smaller. You end up with a car that weighs less than a tonne, which is getting back into the realms of being seriously fun to drive. Combined with the instant torque of an electric powertrain, it's kind of the holy grail of what drivers are looking for: lightweight, high power, lots of grip and to achieve good lap time.”

By following the design brief and straying away from a prescriptive automotive or motorsport rulebook, the Speirling is small. It means everything has been designed to be bespoke and is also why it looks so different.

Where it does comply with racing is in the carbon fibre monocoque. It satisfies a hybrid of LMP, F1 and Formula E requirements. Despite the LMP1-grade rollover and F1 side impact structures, though, the McMurtry is unsurprisingly ineligible for competition. Like the Porsche 919 Hybrid Evo and ID.R, this will target lap records - although will spawn a road car. As per Turton, this is the “ultimate electric track hypercar”.

The Speirling's fan kicked up plenty of dust, hay, and a new Festival of Speed official record

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

And then there’s why it behaves so differently. It’s a fan car. This isn’t like Gordon Murray seeking a legal understanding of the 1978 F1 regulations to create the Brabham BT46, the fan for which had a primary function of cooling.

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With the Speirling (Irish for 'thunderstorm'), it’s all about sucking the car to the road. At a standstill, it produces a staggering 2000kg of downforce. Up to 150mph, its numbers are ahead of F1 machinery. And the fan is why at Goodwood the McMurtry was spewing dust and the occasional bit of hay out of the back as it welded itself to the asphalt. Any leftover air was then inhaled by the spectators who gasped in unison as Chilton darted past. You can clearly hear the crowd’s collective intake of breath in the video.

This different way of producing in excess of 3G of grip in the corners also boosts the low-drag credentials of the Speirling. New-for-2022 rear wing aside, there’s little in the way of aerodynamic appendages and flicks to upset the air flow. Efficiency is king.

Turton adds: “The way our car generates its lap time is different from a conventional car. We've got really good low-speed grip. Our apex speeds at low speed are very good. And then because it's very low drag, you get up to your Vmax fairly quickly.”

The side-by-side with Heidfeld’s 41.6s run is particularly revealing in this respect. Yes, the electric Speirling’s dash to 60mph in under 1.5s makes the F1 car looks almost pedestrian and explains some of the advantage. But then it’s the composure through the corners.

Whereas the MP4/13 is deflected by every crown and camber in the road to look wild, the McMurtry is spectacular in its own right for being so planted. And by being quicker than F1 machinery through low-speed corners and off the line, it’s difficult to see how the grand prix paddock might retake the Goodwood record just now.

This is a remarkable story given that in 2021, British Hillclimb Championship points leader and instrumental development driver Alex Summers debuted the car at Goodwood and set a weekend best time of 58.59s. There, Chilton happened to be passing and was recognised by Turton, who tried his luck and doorstepped him there to recruit the future record-setter.

Turton concludes: “It's amazing how it’s gone from a relatively under-the-radar secret company, and now having some really fantastic news coverage over the last week due to the kindness of the Duke to invite us for two consecutive years. To come back to set the record, it's definitely a dream come true for the team. Everyone is super proud.”

It's difficult to see the record set by Chilton in the McMurtry being re-taken by an F1 car anytime soon

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images