Tesla double news: Model S Plaid liftback is once again the fastest mass-produced electric car on the Nürburgring Nordschleife, breaking last year's Porsche record Taycan Turbo S. The new Track Package, which is now available as an option to all owners of the Plaid version, helped to reduce the lap time of the American car.
The duel between the Tesla Model S and the Porsche Taycan has been going on since 2019: then in August, the Taycan, through the efforts of Porsche test driver Lars Kern, showed the best lap time on the Nordschleife among electric vehicles, and even before the official premiere of the model. Elon Musk, after such an impressive promotion from Porsche, promised that the Tesla Model S would be able to beat the Taycan record and in the autumn of the same year equipped a team to test the future top version of the Plaid at the Nurburgring – its official premiere took place only in June 2021, and in September of the same year, Tesla happily announced a new Nurburgring record, then Swedish driver Andreas Simonsen was driving an American car.
Porsche's answer was not long in coming: the company's engineers developed a Performance Kit for the Taycan Turbo S, with which, in 2022, a German electric sedan with Lars Kern at the wheel flew over the Nordschleife in 7 minutes 33,350 s.
After that, it was Tesla's turn to prepare a track package for the Model S Plaid, now it is on sale, and Tesla's social media pages over the weekend reported a new record on the Nordschleif – 7 min 25.231 s. German driver Tom Schwister was driving the Model S this time.
Recall that at the end of 2019, the administration of the Nurburgring undertook to personally record all the official records of the route, since then the races have been held on a full circle 20.832 km long (previously, a distance of 20.6 km was taken into account, that is, a full circle, but minus the T13 section , where the start-finish line is located) and fall into the table on the Nürburgring website, divided into 13 classes. There are two electric vehicle classes in it: mass-produced and relatively mass models, such as the Tesla Model S and Porsche Taycan, and small-scale supercars like the Lotus Evija and Rimac Nevera, and there is not a single official record in the electric supercar class yet.
Now we will tell you what is the Track Package for the Tesla Model S Plaid. It costs $ 20,000, its main trump card is crab-ceramic brakes, which made it possible to raise the maximum speed ceiling to 322 km/h. This speed was promised at the time of the premiere of the Tesla Model S Plaid, but was not available on the cars of the first year of production, which began to arrive to customers last year: at first the ceiling was 262 km/h, why, using the special Track Mode, it was raised to 282 km/h, and only now reached 322 km/h with the Track Package, because Tesla is finally confident that the brakes will hold up and reliably slow the car from such a high speed. During the record lap, the maximum speed was 289 km/h.
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The size of the front crab-ceramic discs included in the Track Package is 410×40 mm (6-piston forged calipers), rear – 410×32 mm (4-piston forged calipers). In addition, the system uses race brake fluid and extra-durable pads.
The Track Package also includes Zero-G lightweight forged wheels wrapped in 285 Goodyear Eagle F1 SuperCar 3R tires. 35 R 20 at the front and 305/30 R 20 at the rear, and new firmware for the control electronics to achieve the best performance on the track.
The power plant has not changed: three electric motors (one at the front axle, two at the rear) produce cumulatively 1020 hp and provide acceleration to 100 km/h in 2.1 s. The range on a single charge is 600 km on the WLTC cycle or 637 km on the EPA cycle. The Tesla Model S Plaid now costs $108,490 in the US and €130,490 in Germany.
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