interesting results …
Turbo S was chip limited to 208 mph indicated but by GPS it was only 199.3 mph so it was disqualified …
ZR1X ran very quick to 150 mph ( much faster than Turbo S ) but was slowed by its gigantic wing when approaching 200 mph
Lucid won because it had the most slippery aerodynamics
McLaren - who cares
while this victory for Lucid is interesting it is meaningless because in real driving the downforce from ZR1X wing is more beneficial than slippery aerodynamics of Lucid … not to mention the much lower weight of ZR1X is a huge advantage in cornering …
Formula 1 cars have a HUGE drag because they are focused almost entirely on downforce. They are also extremely light. Lucid is the opposite - heavy and slippery - this makes for great EV range but would make for a relatively poor track car.
i posted this story not to glaze Lucid for beating ZR1X but to make people think about various tradeoffs in design and how winning a race even by a wide margin doesn’t necessarily mean the car is better.
the other point here is that indicated speedometer speed is usually lower than actual GPS speed. manufacturers don’t want to be held accountable for your speeding so they always set speedometer to shower higher than actual number - otherwise somebody could say their speedometer was showing they were doing legal speed when pulled over.
and finally ( not related to this article ) there is also 1 foot of rollout, standard in US acceleration testing that also introduces a discrepancy in results depending on how they are measured. i won’t explain it here - you can google that. just be aware that both speed and acceleration can show up differently depending on measurement methods.
also track surface type and temperature matter as well.
this is ultimately why head to head races have value because they cancel all these differences out.
arguing about numbers can be meaningless because of the differences in the way they were obtained. but a head to head race is fair, unless maybe one car has an extra person in form of cameraman or maybe full tank of gas versus empty etc.
although these car and driver races were not head to head they were at least ( i assume ) done under relatively consistent conditions, so there is value in that kind of testing.