The team behind the McMurty Speirling will attempt an outright course record at the Goodwood Festival of Speed next week, and they’ve enlisted some handy drivers to help them do it. Ex-F1 and Indy star, Alex Chilton, and British Hillclimb ace Alex Summers will be sharing driving duties at Goodwood, a year on from the Speirling making its global debut at the same event. The crew is aiming to beat the Volkswagen ID.R, which set a time of 41.18 seconds with Romain Dumas at the wheel in 2019, breaking the 41.6-second time set by Nick Heidfeld in a McLaren F1 car way back in 1999.
The Speirling, which Top Gear aptly
described as looking like a mini Batmobile, is a single-seater EV with an
insane amount of suck thanks to two fans that draw air from underneath the
floor. How much does it suck? Try 2,000 kg following a recent
upgrade, and no, you don’t have to be traveling at warp speed to generate it.
That downforce is available from zero mph. McMurty says that means the
Speirling generates more downforce than an F1 racer up to 240 km/h and does it while generating significantly less drag.
The Speirling features a bespoke carbon
fiber monocoque chassis, active ride height suspension, an 800 V battery, and a
dual motor setup driving the rear wheels. It’s incredibly small, measuring just 3.2 meters in length, and 1.5 meters across, which
helps McMurty limit curb weight to less than 1,000 kg. The company
hasn’t released power and weight figures but does say it has an incredibly
strong power-to-weight ratio of 1,000 bhp per tonne, which equates
to 2.2 lbs per horsepower.
It can scoot from zero to 97 km/h in 1.5 seconds, but the top speed is limited to 240 km/h by its
transmission. And although it’s an EV, it definitely isn’t quiet, like most
EVs. Those fans generate 100 dB of drive-by sound, which is only one reason why
the Speirling, which was designed from the ground up as a track car, won’t be
hitting the public road any time soon.
