Pikes Peak-winning VW I.D. R smashes Goodwood electric car record
Volkswagen's all-electric I.D. R has smashed the official Goodwood Festival of Speed hillclimb record for electric vehicles, beating the existing time by 3.5 seconds
Last month, the 680bhp, four-wheel-drive sports prototype won at Pikes Peak, where two-time Le Mans winner Romain Dumas bettered Sebastien Loeb's 8m13.878s outright record set in a Peugeot 208 T16, by 16s.
At the Festival of Speed, the I.D. R was entered into the timed Shootout and, during Saturday's qualifying run, Dumas set a weekend best time of 43.05s up the 1.16-mile route.
In the hotter temperatures of the Final, he was slower with a 43.86s run but still topped the leaderboards and beat the existing Goodwood electric record of 47.34s, set by Jonny Cocker in the 850bhp Lola-Drayson B12 69/EV in 2013.
"It was a good race, it was not easy," said Dumas. "The limit was very close and we just made this one as clean as possible, no risk.
"We have to come back next year to beat the overall record."
On the morning of the Final, during an untimed run, Dumas made a mistake when he "found the limit" and sent the car sliding over the grass but managed to slow before hitting the hay bales lining the course.
"I just lost the car, but it was a good slide actually," said Dumas. "I said [to myself] 'now, if I back off we'll finish on our back or somewhere close to the trees'."
Francois-Xavier Demaison, VW Motorsport's technical boss, reckoned the car has the potential to go faster in the future.
Due to the rapid turnaround from Pikes Peak, the team had not been able to sufficiently tune the I.D. R's set-up for Goodwood.
"This car has been designed for Pikes Peak, for a 20-kilometre race," he told Autosport. "We have too much energy for this race.
"This is not designed for this 1.8-kilometre distance, but I think we have some ideas to make it faster for the future."
The VW I.D. R continues a record-breaking run of form for the Volkswagen Group.
On top of the I.D. R's double hillclimb success, the upgraded Porsche 919 Hybrid Evo LMP1 car has unofficially broken both the Nurburgring Nordschleife and Spa-Francorchamps lap records.
Although the 919 Hybrid Evo did run at the Festival of Speed, Porsche turned down the chance to attack the outright hillclimb record of 41.60s set by Nick Heidfeld in a McLaren-Mercedes MP4/13 Formula 1 car in 1999.
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