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Written by Ollie Marriage
"The most impressive car I"ve ever driven in competition." As statement"s go, it"s a bold one. When you learn it was uttered about a car that was cobbled together in under nine months and came from the mouth of a man whose more usual daily driver over the past few years has been a Porsche 919 Hybrid LMP1 car, you sit up and take notice. Yep, Romain Dumas, a man who won Le Mans twice driving the Porsche, said those words about this, the VW ID R Pikes Peak. Why? What makes it so special? The answer to that begins with the event it competed in. The Pikes Peak hillclimb in Colorado is not like most racing events. Most racing events are governed around the need to keep the racing close, often to the detriment of ingenuity and innovation. The Pikes Peak Unlimited class is different, the rules are unlimited. And so"s the event itself, a 12.42-mile, 156-curve course that starts at the altitude of many Alpine summits and climbs a vertical mile from there. To conquer it, VW created the world"s fastest bespoke hillclimb car. Powered by electricity not only to defy oxygen starvation at altitude, but also develop the instant torque necessary for teleport-level acceleration. Six hundred and seventy bhp, 1,100kg including Romain, capable of hitting 100mph from a standing start in 3.7secs. Ultra-precise in both its engineering and dynamics, with wings to glue the fat slicks to the road and regenerative braking to harvest energy. So complete, so honed that surely the ID R is now the template for success at Pikes Peak certainly it"s hard to see a way back to the podium for the internal combustion engine.
Date written: 1 Jan 2019
More of this article on the Top gear website
ID: 14429
"The most impressive car I"ve ever driven in competition." As statement"s go, it"s a bold one. When you learn it was uttered about a car that was cobbled together in under nine months and came from the mouth of a man whose more usual daily driver over the past few years has been a Porsche 919 Hybrid LMP1 car, you sit up and take notice. Yep, Romain Dumas, a man who won Le Mans twice driving the Porsche, said those words about this, the VW ID R Pikes Peak. Why? What makes it so special? The answer to that begins with the event it competed in. The Pikes Peak hillclimb in Colorado is not like most racing events. Most racing events are governed around the need to keep the racing close, often to the detriment of ingenuity and innovation. The Pikes Peak Unlimited class is different, the rules are unlimited. And so"s the event itself, a 12.42-mile, 156-curve course that starts at the altitude of many Alpine summits and climbs a vertical mile from there. To conquer it, VW created the world"s fastest bespoke hillclimb car. Powered by electricity not only to defy oxygen starvation at altitude, but also develop the instant torque necessary for teleport-level acceleration. Six hundred and seventy bhp, 1,100kg including Romain, capable of hitting 100mph from a standing start in 3.7secs. Ultra-precise in both its engineering and dynamics, with wings to glue the fat slicks to the road and regenerative braking to harvest energy. So complete, so honed that surely the ID R is now the template for success at Pikes Peak certainly it"s hard to see a way back to the podium for the internal combustion engine.
Date written: 1 Jan 2019
More of this article on the Top gear website
ID: 14429
