This week at the 78th Goodwood Members meeting, Dario Franchitti stole the show. The event served as the first public debut of Gordon Murray's historic masterpiece, the T.50.
During the entire period of development, Gordon Murray Automotive (GMA )has chronicled the process and we've watched everything from engine development to tests on a dynamometer. Over the last three weeks, GMA has been teasing us with video after video of slow incremental progress. That included Dario piloting the test mule "George" which used the T.50 drivetrain. Then we saw the T.50 XP prototype get driven on the track, albeit with a low rpm rev limiter.
Today though we get the chance to watch as the real car with the real drivetrain absolutely wails around Goodwood. Perhaps the best part, there's no unnecessary lead-up to the show. From the moment we begin watching, the T.50 is the only noise we hear.
Cameras were both on the dash looking back at Franchitti and behind his head looking out from where the right side passenger would sit. Dario takes multiple laps around the hallowed grounds. Commentators from the day were actually shocked that he just kept going.
Watching and hearing the T.50 hypercar accelerate reminds us of how powerful it truly is. Despite a fairly far away shot of the gauge cluster, we can tell that it's revved out to at least 6,000 RPM multiple times.
On the final lap, we're looking back at Franchitti's face as he romps on it hard. While we don't see the rev-counter, we're told by a small annotation that he hit the 12,100 redline. Frankly, to our ears, we think it was still a bit short off that mark. The track was quite moist though. Nevertheless, it's incredibly melodious at whatever RPM. We can't wait to see more of this.
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