After an eventful trip to the dangerous mountain last year in a Model 3 Performance, Randy Pobst is back at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in the new Unplugged Performance Model S Plaid. Today, he’s raced up the upper section of the course and the on-board video looks insane.
The new Tesla Model S Plaid is capable of accelerating from 0-100km/hr in 2.1s or 0-60mph in less than 1.9s. Those numbers are based on a car that comes off the production line, but this is a race car. Unplugged Performance make aftermarket parts for Tesla vehicles and immediate jumped into removing anything unnecessary from the interior and replacing regular components with all the fancy light-weight race gear.
Given the speeds achieved in racing the car does have a full roll-cage installed, as well as plenty of go-fast bits like a massive rear wing and front lip to improve the aerodynamics.
While the on-screen display showed 125mph, the dash showed 132mph, which translates to 212.43 km/hr, so Pobst certainly wasn’t holding back.
While competitors don’t get to practice the course completely until they actually race it, they do get to practice sections at a time and I think you’ll agree the car looks like an absolute rocket ship. Not only does it fly off the line, but in and out of the tight turns it’s stunning how fast the car moves.
The whole track is 12.42 miles, featuring 156 turns and the first goal is to make it to the finishing line without tipping over the edge, which many competitors have done over the years. The second goal is to see how close the Plaid can get to the EV record on the mountain. Currently the EV record is from 2018, set by Romain Dumas the time of 7 minutes 57.148 seconds was achieved in the the all-electric Volkswagen I.D race car.
Good luck Randy and the whole Unplugged Performance team.
Great, (but what’s with the horrible siren sound in the video??
Spoiled it for me, had to turn the sound off.