- the all-electric volkswagen i.d. r adds the nürburgring to its list of accomplishments, having ascended pikes peak a year ago.
- the i.d. r set a new lap record on the nürburgring-nordschleife of 6:05.336, which the automaker is calling a "milestone in electro-mobility."
- the record run was accomplished with an average speed of 128.6 mph, volkswagen said.
update 6/10/19: volkswagen has released another video of the lap, but this time it's a complete, unedited video from inside the car. it shows both the driver and the view out the front of the car, as well as recorded data like speed, throttle and braking forces, and position on the track. watch it below:
update 6/3/19: volkswagen has now released a video of the full lap record that includes a post-lap interview with romain. annoyingly, and like the pikes peak video, it isn't all in-car footage, instead cutting away to (admittedly nice) helicopter footage in some sections. we have embedded the video below.
while eyes often glaze over at news that another nürburgring record has fallen, this is one that is worth paying attention to. the volkswagen i.d. r ev has just lapped the 12.9-mile nordschleife in a time of 6:05.336, the second-fastest ever recorded and a clear 40 seconds inside the previous fastest electric vehicle there, the nio ep9.
while the i.d. r is not a road car and the nio ep9 nominally is, the achievement is still remarkable, even more so when you consider that it is comfortably inside the 6:11.13 time that stefan bellof managed in a race-spec porsche 956 in 1983, a record that stood until last year. the id.r is second only to the unrestricted porsche 919 evo lmp1 racer; not bad for a car with barely more than half the power-to-weight ratio.
the nürburgring id.r is a heavily developed version of the car that went to pikes peak, adapted for the higher speeds of the german track—which includes the 2.5-mile-long döttinger höhe straightaway. volkswagen brought two cars to the track and used fast chargers capable of replenishing the twin battery packs in around 20 minutes, but driver romain dumas—the same man who was piloting at pikes peak—only completed four laps throughout the day. even the first of these, nominally an installation lap to test everything was working, was well inside the previous record at 6:25. times fell steadily from there with even the #2 car turning in a lap of 6:09 while testing an alternate setup for the #1 car.
the final run took place just before 3 p.m. local time with sven smeets, volkswagen's director of motorsport, admitting that it was only just outside the time the company's simulators had predicted the car would be capable of in optimal conditions. smeets admitted that air temperatures of 77 degrees were slightly too hot for optimal performance from the battery pack, with the team struggling to manage heat during the run. he also confirmed that the car had "only a couple of hundred meters" of charge remaining at the end of its timed lap; like the nio ep9, the i.d. r had to take a minimal runup to the official start line and didn't have time to warm tires or brakes.
dumas admitted to being happy with the time: "i think we pushed ourselves to the limit, both me and especially the team." we are likely to see the i.d. r attempting more records in the future, although smeets was predictably reticent about what these might be.
"we are looking into some other challenges," he told c/d, "but first we have to enjoy today."