1,500-HP Audi Mauls Tesla S Plaid in a Race, Too Bad It's a One-Time 8-Second Wonder

The biased allegation about the two contradicting attributes of the reciprocating assembly is based on the following hypothesis. The internal combustion engine gets better as technology progresses (think of what the first such mechanisms were good for performance-wise when they came around).

But just as ICE technology is following the evolutionary polynomial ascending curve, so does the rest of everything motion related. When a specific invention reaches its development boundaries, it either gets adopted forever or is ditched in favor of the next best thing.

To put it into a broader, more common perspective, think of the simplest inventions used on a daily basis: the wheel, the knife, the measly shoelace, or the food bowl. Those have been around for a long time and haven't changed much.

And now look at our means of transportation: apart from our own two legs, every device we invented to make travel easier, faster, more accessible, or more fun has crossed several important stages of major development.

The car is probably the most essential method of movement devised by representatives of the Homo Sapiens species (although the train, boat, and airplane are very close behind). But it already underwent several drastic transformations on multiple levels.

The latest – and probably most groundbreaking in evolution – is the shift in the principle of operation. The transition from igniting a flammable substance (for creating enough energy to actuate a complicated assembly of correlated parts) to using an invisible magnetism to initiate motion is a paradigm shift of cosmic proportions.

After millennia of continuous usage, fire is no longer man's best ally in the perpetual quest for absolute domination. Electricity is stepping in without mercy, and that's not entirely acceptable (at least for one specific group of people).

They're called "gearheads," and to them, electricity is that thing that needs to create a spark at the tip of a purpose-built rod that sets an air-and-gasoline mixture ablaze. They'll go to extremes to see their beloved worship idols endure in the long run.

To reach that goal, they play with a very dark form of magic – they have a different name for it: tuning – that is said to protect them from the power of electrons. And they are so determined to see their legacy live on that some are ready to accept a radical trade: keep the combustion privilege in exchange for money, time, and mainstream logic.

After all, what else would you call the exercise of buying an expensive automobile, then spending some more to add performance-enhancing alterations to it just to prove a point? The point being EVs are not always the best car in a drag race.

This is where things get interminably complicated – because defining what that "best" is can spark a very heated debate. Some argue it's simply winning the race, no matter the cost. Others factor in reliability, efficiency, consistency, or even logic.

Regardless of their opinion, one thing is clear: a race between a classic piston-powered car and an electric one is always an excellent way to waste some time. Take this Tesla-versus-Audi event as the perfect example.

Brooks Weisblat from Drag Times YouTube channel is an ambassador of both worlds – he equally enjoys the two architectures. This time, he got a monster of a drag race between his one Tesla S Plaid and a heavily tuning-fortified Audi R8.

The German supercar is a quarter-million 1,500-hp (1,520 PS) mothership with a 5.2-liter V10, all-wheel drive, twin turbochargers, and twin clutches. Also, it has a bunch of other mods to its powertrain that tick an extra $100k on the build sheet. The wizards responsible for this antichrist are 3:16 Speed. One of their creations paid a visit to Bradenton Motorsports Park in Florida to have a good time.

It's a very short story (8.944 seconds) with an ICE-happy ending. Here are the stats: 161.61 mph (260 kph) trap speed, first place, made the Plaid look like it was parked. Despite a very late departure (a reaction time of nearly half a second), a couple of poorly timed upshifts, and a miserable wheel-spinning launch, the V10 R8 cranked it up. It nuked the 1020-hp (1,034 PS) Tesla like there was no second chance.

Guess what? There isn't because all that horsepower comes with a heavy toll: the engine needs to cool down considerably between runs. It simply can't run back-to-back races lest it seeks to commit suicide by physics. The massive amounts of power rapidly discharged through the seven-speed auto gave the R8 a heat stroke of ICE-age proportions.

After all this, only one question remains to be answered in the future: how badly would the Plaid have lost the face-off if the Audi had executed its maneuvers flawlessly? I guess it's up to Brooks to let us know in his future uploads.