MOTORSPORT: VW’s electric 'rocket' smashes Pikes Peak record

Volkswagen has conquered the world’s most famous hillclimb with its electric ‘rocket’, obliterating the five-year-old record at Pikes Peak in America.

Frenchman Romain Dumas raced VW’s lightweight, streamlined I.D. R Pikes Peak up through 156 corners over 19.99km at the weekend in 7 minutes 57.148 seconds.

Not only was that the fastest time ever clocked by an electric car in the ‘Race to the Clouds’ but it cut 16 seconds off Dumas’ countryman and nine-time world rally champion Sebastien Loeb’s previous record time in the Peugeot 208 T16 in 2013.

The 500kW (680hp) I.D. R, weighing less than 1100kg, has two electric engines driving the front and rear axles.

The Pikes Peak course climbs almost 1440 metres to the peak in the rarefied air at 4302 metres.

Six classes of car as well as motorcycles compete in the event, which has been held 96 times since 1916.

Dumas has now won it four times in five years – previously in Norma M20 RDs – but this was his first time with electric power.

VW only embarked on the I.D. R Pikes Peak project a little over eight months ago.

“Awesome! We exceeded even our own high expectations with that result,” Dumas said.

“Since this week’s tests, we have known that it was possible to break the all-time record.

“For it to come off, everything had to come together perfectly – from the technology to the driver. And the weather had to play ball too.

“That everything ran so smoothly is an incredible feeling, and the new record on Pikes Peak is the icing on the cake.

“I still cannot believe that Volkswagen and my name are behind this incredible time.

“The I.D. R Pikes Peak is the most impressive car I have ever driven in competition.”

That from a driver who has won the 24 Hours of Le Mans three times with VW marques Porsche and Audi in hi-tech LMP1 sports cars.

VW board member Dr Frank Welsch said the I.D. R Pikes Peak “is the sporty forerunner of Volkswagen’s I.D. family and today we saw what this technology is capable of”.

VW motorsport director Sven Smets said the I.D. R “is the most innovative and complex car ever developed by Volkswagen Motorsport”.

“It should actually be impossible to achieve all that and especially the all-time record in such a short time, but our team pulled it off,” Smets said.

Apart from slashing Loeb’s record, Dumas’ time knocked a minute off the electric record for the climb set two years ago by New Zealander Rhys Millen’s in the e0 PP100 which had seven YASA-400 electric motors with eO controllers, peak power of 1190kW and peak torque 2520Nm.

Millen’s father Rod is a legendary figure at Pikes Peak among others including German Walter Rohrl, French woman Michele Mouton, Swede Stig Blomquist and Japan’s Nobuhiro ‘Monster’ Tajima.