You've probably seen the Tesla Model S spanking bottoms mostly in quarter mile drag races, not because it is the EV's most preferred distance, but because it's the sweet spot between offering the vehicles enough space to stretch their legs and catch speed while also keeping the runs entertainingly short.
If you've watched the S race, though, particularly in the rare occasions it loses, you will have noticed how the sedan tends to explode off the line, attempting to put as much distance between itself and its opponent early on knowing the other car is likely to start reeling it in at the top end.
The launch is undoubtedly Tesla's party trick, which means the shorter the distance, the less likely it is for its challenger to catch up. Because except for extremely serious rigs, any other vehicle is invariably going to find itself playing catch up with the Model S.
The four cars this Model S raced against certainly fall into the "serious rigs" category, though whether they are serious enough to beat it remains to be seen. The first one is a stripped, built Pontiac Thunderbird with nitrous, drag radials, and skinny tires upfront. To show just how serious it is, it even does two burnouts ahead of the race. After such an introduction, you'll be glad to hear the race doesn't disappoint. The Thunderbird actually proves to be the quicker vehicle with a better ET, but it's the driver that loses it overall with a worse reaction time than the Tesla's. Sometimes it's not enough to throw money at a problem, you have to use your skills as well.
The second car is an LT1 Camaro with a built engine (see a pattern emerging?) that sticks out of the hood just to make sure everybody notices its presence. It also has a nitrous bottle and slick tires. Watching the replay of the race, you can see the Chevy lose precious time during gearshifts, showing another advantage the EV powertrain has over ICEs. The Camaro runs an almost perfectly flat seven (7.0002 seconds), which isn't enough to beat Tesla's 6.8915. Add one more tenth of a second from the reaction time and the overall gap is a solid 0.2283 seconds.
The third race brings Tesla's first defeat, but it's not actually the other car that manages to do it, but the Model S driver himself. Showing you shouldn't worry too much about the competition, the EV owner fears he might lose if he doesn't get an excellent reaction time, so he very narrowly red lights (-0.0186 seconds). The Camaro driver's reaction time of 0.04 is excellent, but he misses a gear and ends up with an ET of over seven seconds, which would have been an easy kill for the Tesla.
Finally, the last contender is a 1989 Ford Mustang GT Foxbody with a 5.0-liter V8, nitrous, slicks - the whole deal. It also has a five-speed manual that, in the end, proves to be its undoing, and not because of how slow the shifts are, but because second gear refuses to engage altogether. It would have been an interesting race, but that's the risk you run with these heavily modified builds.
"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie) Full profile
Would you like AUTOEVOLUTION to send you notifications?
Google News