conquered – All about car

The Volkswagen ID R was always going to set a new hill record on Tianmen Mountain’s Big Gate Road. Of course it was. For one thing, it was the first official timed run up the 6.776-mile ribbon of concrete, which features 99 tortuous turns as it winds 3609 feet up the spectacular mountain known as the Gateway to Heaven in China’s Hunan province, at an average gradient of 10.14%. The road was built in 2006 to reach the amazing Heaven’s Gate natural arch and other sights atop the mountain. A mammoth project, it snakes and winds up the steep, rocky peak, carved by ingenuity and sheer force of will at angles a road has no place being built. It’s normally only used by a fleet of tourist buses – but even the most committed driver of a Golden Dragon XML6700 would struggle to match Romain Dumas in VW’s 671bhp electric record breaker. A few cars have previously tackled the road in anger. Land Rover brought a 567bhp Range Rover Sport to the mountain, with Jaguar’s Formula E reserve driver Ho-Pin Tung summiting the hill in 9min 51sec. But that time was unofficial, and set on a slightly longer course. So what does Dumas’ new official time of 7min 38.535sec, at an average speed of 53.07mph, actually prove? The ID R’s previous record-breaking runs – an outright hill record on Pikes Peak; an electric Nürburgring Nordschleife lap record and an outright Goodwood Hillclimb course record – were set on famous, historic motorsport venues, allowing for direct comparison with a huge variety of proven machinery. People know what it means to lap the Nordschleife in 6min 05.336sec. But you shouldn’t dismiss VW’s Tianmen Mountain trip as nothing more than a publicity stunt. For one thing, any manufacturer-run motorsport programme is, at heart, a publicity stunt. While the ID R does offer some learning about performance EVs, it has relatively little in common with the newly revealed ID 3. It is intended as the ‘sporty figurehead’ of the ID family: in that ambassadorial role, VW absolutely had to find a showcase for it in China, both the firm’s biggest market and the world’s largest EV market. VW sold 3.11 million cars in China last year, and will launch local-market ID models next year. By 2023, VW is planning to offer 10 ID models in China – and the country will be a key part of its plans to sell one million electric cars worldwide annually by 2025. But where in China could VW go? The country isn’t exactly flush with grand, challenging and historic motorsport venues in the style of Pikes Peak (which held its first hillclimb in 1916) or the Nordschleife (which opened in 1927). The Shanghai International Circuit, built in 2004, might be firmly established on the Formula 1 calendar, but it’s not exactly inspiring. Without a historic venue to capitalise on, VW created its own. And instead of breaking a record, the aim was to set a standard for others – and then invite them to come and beat it. Tianmen Mountain was chosen because, as well as having a tough, twisting and scenic hillclimb-style road, it is one of China’s most famous tourist locations. Situated just outside the city of Zhangjiajie around 930 miles south-west of Beijing, the mountain draws masses of visitors all year round. VW agreed on a start and finish point with local officials to ensure future attempts use a standard course. While there might not have been an official time to beat, VW wanted to ensure the ID R completed the course as close to its potential as possible. Yet to even know what time was possible on such an unusual venue proved complicated. “All engineers like new challenges, and this was a big challenge,” says François-Xavier Demaison, VW Motorsport’s technical boss. “It’s difficult because the road is like something you’d find on the Monte Carlo Rally. To come here with a car that’s like a sports prototype, you have to be a bit crazy – but engineers are crazy.” VW Motorsport team members visited the mountain late last year, making several runs up the course to video it and capture data using a track logger. At a few corners, they also unfurled a tape measure to check the width of the road and ensure the ID R could actually get round it. The tightest corner – Turn 88 in the perilously twisty section the team named the Layer Cake – has a total radius of around six metres. The team didn’t have to adjust the steering lock – although, after the first practice run, they did increase the level of power steering in the car to make life slightly easier for Dumas. The team used the data information gathered from the site visit – and, in truth, plenty of guesswork – to settle on a base set-up. That included the big front and rear wings the ID R used at the high altitudes of Pikes Peak, rather than the far smaller wing (with drag reduction system) that was used for the Nürburgring and Goodwood. That choice was made due to the sheer volume of slow bends, although Demaison notes that the speeds were so slow the wings produced
Origin: How the Volkswagen ID R conquered China’s toughest road

After setting a new outright record on the 12.42-mile Pikes Peak hillclimb last year, the electric Volkswagen ID R already sat atop one very big mountain. Which left the question: what next? For VW, the answer was simple: showcase the electric car’s potential on the proving ground of choice for all car firms, the 12.90-mile snaking ribbon of bumpy, undulating Tarmac that is the Nürburgring Nordschleife. Officially, the goal was to break the 6min 45.90sec electric car lap record. In truth, that was never really in doubt. This was about pushing that electric record as far as it would go. The previous mark was set by the Nio EP9 which, while producing 1341bhp from four electric motors, was still a production-based car that could be made road legal. The ID R is a pure-bred competition car, developed by one of the world’s largest manufacturers. On its first run – a practice lap – it smashed the Nio’s record. By 20 seconds. With a ‘mere’ 671bhp from two electric motors, one on each axle providing four-wheel drive, the ID R isn’t the most powerful EV developed – but VW’s philosophy isn’t on outright power, rather ensuring it has full power throughout a run. Fortuitously, at 12.42 and 12.90 miles respectively, Pikes Peak and the Nürburgring are a similar length, so VW retained the same lithium ion battery design, featuring eight 56-cell modules, split into two blocks (VW remains coy on the energy capacity of the batteries). But length is the only thing the two courses have in common, and the ID R was extensively reworked for the Nürburgring. The mammoth Pikes Peak-spec rear wing was switched for a smaller one, featuring a Drag Reduction System that, with a new floor and front spoiler, cuts drag by up to 20%. Minimising drag is vital on such a circuit, particularly on the 1.3-mile Döttinger Höhe straight which, inconveniently for an electric car, comes near the end of the lap. With fewer slow corners offering fewer chances to regain energy under braking, the energy management system was reworked. There were also new Bridgestone tyres and lightweight carbonfibre brake discs. One thing VW didn’t change was the driver: Romain Dumas. Chosen for Pikes Peak as a former winner of the famous hillclimb, Dumas is also a multiple Nürburgring 24 Hours victor. That said, until Monday 3 June, he’d never been round the track at anything close to the speeds he managed in the ID R. “Compared to a GT car, the cornering speeds and g-forces are far higher,” he says. “The limiting factor becomes your body and your mind.” On Pikes Peak, Dumas had a single timed run. But given a full day at the Nordschleife, he made five runs using two ID R chassis (a primary car and a second used for evaluation and test runs). His first lap was 6min 25sec, but he wasn’t entirely happy with the set-up of the car. With settings tweaked, Dumas duly clocked a 6min 12sec lap despite running low on power as he crossed the line. “I was honing the driving style, particularly in the fast bits,” said Dumas after that run. “At Flugplatz, I was lifting a bit: I arrived at 255km/h (158mph) and lifted to 250. On the first run I was at 245, so I gained 5km/h – but now I need to not lift, and find 5km/h more.” After lunch, VW settled on two more runs: another test lap, before one final push. Dumas’ ‘practice’ lap was 6min 09sec, enough to make the ID R the second-fastest car to ever lap the Nordschleife. His final effort was quicker still: 6min 05.336sec. Incredible for an electric car. Incredible for any car. “On the final lap I attacked the kerbs and took the inside line at the Karousel, which I hadn’t done before,” says Dumas. “I thought if we damaged the car’s floor a little bit, it wouldn’t matter. We were really beginning to push the limit. It was starting to get interesting.” Could the ID R have gone quicker? Undoubtedly: the team hinted its simulated fastest lap was slightly faster still, motorsport boss Sven Smeets noting the unusually hot June weather made managing the battery temperature and power tough. Still, the time was impressive enough. But we’re talking relatively marginal gains: it was never going to trouble the outright lap record, the still-hard-to-fathom 5min 19.45sec set by Timo Bernhard last year in the Porsche 919 Evo. That machine was a heavily modified Le Mans winner re-imagined without limit, featuring a hybrid powertrain pairing a 710bhp 2.0-litre V4 engine with a 433bhp electric motor. There’s no disgrace in not coming close to matching that. Instead, consider that the ID R was quicker than every other car that has ever lapped the track, going faster than the record time that stood for 35 years before Bernhard’s run – Stefan Bellof’s 6min 11.13sec effort in a Porsche 956 in 1983. Regardless of power source, that’s rarefied air, another milestone for electric car technology – and another mountain the ID R now sits atop. What’s next for ID R? Having conquered two of
Origin: How Volkswagen’s electric record-breaker conquered the Nurburgring