Previous record beaten by over a minute with a time not far off supercars such as the Nissan GT-R, Porsche Turbo and Pagani Zonda
By Gavin Conway on August 29, 2011 7:31 PM
As confirmed by TheChargingPoint.com yesterday evening, Toyota Motorsport GmbH has set a stunning new electric lap record around the iconic Nürburgring Nordschleife circuit in Germany.
The new record of 7 minutes 47.794secs was a full 1 minute 13secs quicker than the previous Nürburgring record set by the Peugeot EX1 pure electric concept car.
The car was driven by Jochen Krumbach and the lap record was completed on road-legal tyres and verified by independent lap timing.
The Radical-based race car is powered by a pair of electric motors that generate a massive 375bhp, sending the power to the rear wheels through a single-speed gearbox. With a kerb weight of 2,134lbs (970kg), the car can reach 62mph in a scant 3.9secs and a top
speed of just over 160mph.
The racer had been engineered by the same crew responsible for Toyota’s previous Formula One campaign, which was rather less
successful than the Nürburgring effort.
The Nürburgring is one of the most challenging road circuits in the world, running just under 13 miles with big changes in elevation. The Toyota racer has a range of more than 120 miles if driven carefully, but a lot less if going for a lap record.
To put the Toyota’s time in perspective, production cars such as the Nissan GT-R, Porsche Turbo and Pagani Zonda all achieved lap times around the 7-minute 30sec range.
Toyota says that it's the record car’s powertrain shows that it would be an ideal candidate for a single-make electric motorsport series. As TheChargingPoint.com columnist and former F1 commentator James Allen said in his column earlier this month, the record attempt could be a prelude to Toyota offering to supply powertrain technology to the FIA motorsports body.
Pascal Vasselon, TMG's Technical Director, said: "The goals for this project were twofold: obviously we wanted to set a new EV lap record and I am very pleased we could achieve that so comprehensively. On the other hand, we also wanted to learn more about the operation of our electric powertrain in extreme circumstances; in motorsport there is no more extreme circuit than the Nürburgring.”
Watch the sensational video below!