- Travis Pastrana drove the McMurtry Speirling at Dunsfold Aerodrome.
- The Speirling's twin electric motors produce 1,000 hp.
- The track-only Speirling Pure is priced at about $1.3 million.
Travis Pastrana has jumped out of planes without parachutes and landed the first double backflip on a motorcycle. He still was not ready for the McMurtry Speirling.
McMurtry Automotive released a new film on September 10, 2026, showing Pastrana driving the electric prototype at Dunsfold Aerodrome in England, the airfield famous as the old Top Gear test track. What he found there was a car built to erase almost everything he knew about grip.
Travis Pastrana And The McMurtry Spéirling
Pastrana eased into it, first getting a feel for the Speirling's steering and brakes before opening the throttle. The car's twin electric motors put out 1,000 hp, and its twin-fan system can generate up to 4,409 lbs of downforce, enough to hold it to a ceiling at a standstill.
Once he let it loose, Pastrana raced the prototype against a quad bike and a motorized unicycle, a deliberately odd choice to show how fast it is through contrast. Nothing there stood a chance.
Gallery: Travis Pastrana And McMurtry Speirling Prototype
"Holy s***. That is what I am talkin' about," Pastrana said in the film. "You can do things you cannot do with any other vehicle… I am going faster than I have gone in any vehicle I have ever driven in my entire life." That is coming from a driver whose resume includes a 670-horsepower Subaru Brataroo.
Thomas Yates, McMurtry's co-founder and managing director, shared the track with Pastrana on his racing quad and called it a surreal moment. The two first met at Goodwood in 2021. Yates raced against Pastrana there again in 2022, the same year test driver Max Chilton set the Speirling's still-unbeaten Goodwood hillclimb record.
McMurtry's Film Lands As The Speirling Goes Racing
The timing is not a coincidence. Pastrana joins a growing list of high-profile drivers who have sampled the car since McMurtry started putting it in front of the public. The company clearly knows a viral clip does more for the Speirling's reputation than another spec sheet ever could.
That reputation is about to become a production reality with the Speirling Pure track-only production model, built with 95 percent new components and limited to 100 examples. It goes 0 to 60 mph in 1.55 seconds, tops out at 190 mph, and has an approximate curb weight of 2,980 pounds with its 100-kWh battery pack.
This prototype already holds the Top Gear test track benchmark at Dunsfold Aerodrome, set in 2025 at 55.9 seconds, beating the previous mark held by a 2004 Renault Formula 1 car by more than three seconds. Pastrana's run adds a celebrity stamp to a machine that was already rewriting what a fan-assisted electric car can do on a circuit.
McMurtry has already shown the final production form of the Pure and opened a dedicated factory. The company priced the car at £995,000, or roughly $1.3 million, with first customer deliveries expected before the end of 2026.
Motor1's Take: Pastrana's run broadens the Speirling's appeal beyond specialist racers. That helps McMurtry sell fan-assisted grip as a usable technology rather than a lab curiosity.
