Sapphire Drags COPO Camaro, Tesla Plaid Races Turbo Cobra & Chevelle, It's a Stomping

Tesla is the current king of EVs, undeniably, at least from the delivery standpoint. No one can come close to their sales performance – neither legacy automakers nor fresh startups. However, when it comes to plain performance, Lucid found a cure – the 1,234-horsepower Air Sapphire. It's a lot costlier than a Model S Plaid, by the way, but not necessarily umpteen times faster.

As such, it's a constant battle between Tesla Model S Plaid owners and Lucid Air Sapphire caretakers – including at the local quarter-mile dragstrip, even when they don't face off with each other. But there's no need to take our word for granted, as we have a feisty example.

So, the owner of the Tesla Plaid Channel promises new Model S Plaid races every week, and so far, has lived up to the promise... and then some more. Most recently, he and his blue Plaid were at Bradenton Motorsports Park in Bradenton, Florida, earlier this month for some great quarter-mile dragstrip action. As always, the Plaid racer doesn't disappoint and, with help from his YouTuber buddies on site, has prepared a cool video featuring the EV exploits of his Plaid and the competing Sapphire.

First, of course, we get to see what happened that night with his Model S, which is weight-reduced and runs on stock Pirelli P Zero tires wrapped around 19-inch wheels. The banting has led to dropping around 170 pounds of weight, which in turn has led to a 9.15s best-of at the track after getting rid of the backseats and most rear material but not the two front seats, door panels, airbags, mirrors, or the 20-speaker audio system with subwoofer.

So, initially, the Plaid goes up against a Big Block Chevy Chevelle SS, which definitely looks promising thanks to its massive rear tires. However, it was no contest, and the host sounded quite disappointed that the great-sounding GM representative didn't put up a better fight. Unfortunately, there was a problem with the BMP app and the paper results, so we didn't get a time slip comparison, just the Plaid's details, including the 9.25s pass.

Secondly, the mighty Tesla's owner chooses to take on a Blue Oval representative – a 363ci-equipped (6.0-liter small block) Ford Mustang Cobra that's also packing a 75mm turbocharger and is said to run into the eights. Well, on this occasion, they didn't inflame the car's reputation, and the Plaid ran a very consistent second 9.25s pass, but that wasn't enough to bring home the second victory of the night. Instead, the Cobra proved even faster and smashed the EV with an 8.77s pass.

Last but not least, that Lucid Air Sapphire finally dropped into the eights that night after numerous attempts by its owner. However, that wasn't nearly enough against a COPO Camaro, hence the 8.52s versus 8.99s loss.