Last week at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, a rare Lotus Evija X race car crashed off the starting line of the hill climb. The nearly 2,000-horsepower electric hypercar barely made it a few feet before ending up nose-first in a barrel of hay. But now we know exactly what happened.
According to Lotus—which offered more detail to the Goodwood Road & Racing website—the driver turned off traction control, which sent all 1,257 pound-feet of torque to the wheels in an instant. In the first few feet, the rear wheels were spinning at 170 miles per hour and the front tires were moving at 150 mph. The driver attempted to save the car from spinning by lifting off the throttle, but the balance of the car shifted, which sent it headlong into the hay barrels.
Instant torque combined with all that tire speed and no traction or rev limiter was a recipe for disaster. The entire incident lasted about 1.5 seconds from start to finish. Thankfully, the driver (who remains unnamed) walked away unharmed.
"Following a formal evaluation by both Goodwood and Lotus, asymmetric grip caused by overcorrection during rapid acceleration at the start line was determined to be the cause," Lotus told us in a statement earlier this week. "The driver was unharmed in the incident and there was minimal damage to the car."
It should be noted that the Lotus did complete a successful run of the hill climb earlier in the week. And traction control was turned off for that initial run. Unfortunately, the Evija X was never able to complete a timed run of the Goodwood hill climb following this incident.
Had it completed a timed run, the Evija X could have been one of the fastest cars of the weekend. It recently set a record at the Nordschleife for being the fastest car with a production chassis. With a lap time of 6 minutes and 24 seconds, the Evija X was third only to the Porsche 919 Hybrid Evo and the Volkswagen ID.R.
Too bad we weren’t able to see that speed on display in Goodwood.
