The Volkswagen ID.R has won the prestigious Festival of Speed with Romain Dumas for the second time in a row and also achieved the fastest ever time with 39.90 seconds. As early as Saturday, the Frenchman in the first fully electric race car from Volkswagen beat the previous track record of Nick Heidfeld in a McLaren Formula 1 racing car by 1.7 seconds, a record that had stood since 1999.
“Setting the overall record in Goodwood with the ID.R makes me very proud. The short hill climb is a very special challenge. Because the track is so short, I could not afford even the slightest driving error, and every fine detail had to be just right in the ID.R’s set-up. This was particularly difficult because we could not test on the track beforehand,” said Romain Dumas, who had already taken the overall victory in 2018, when he simultaneously set the best electric time.
Volkswagen Motorsport had systematically modified the ID.R for its outing at the ‘Goodwood Festival of Speed’. Among other things, the latest evolution of the electric race car was lighter than when it set the records on Pikes Peak and at the Nürburgring. “We used a smaller battery than at the Nürburgring and optimised the power output. As such, the new sprint version of the ID.R weighs less than 1,000 kilograms, with the driver on board,” said François-Xavier Demaison, Technical Director at Volkswagen Motorsport. The ID.R also completed its record- breaking run without the Drag Reduction System (DRS) that was designed for the high-speed sections of the Nürburgring, as the characteristic of the track in Goodwood made this superfluous.
Technology partner Bridgestone, which was also involved in the record-breaking run in Goodwood in 1999, also supplied special tyres for the 1.86-kilometre sprint. “We are proud to have been part of this project and the new record in Goodwood. To ensure the Volkswagen ID.R had the best tyres for this track, we developed a particularly soft variant of the Bridgestone Potenza slick,” said Mark Tejedor, Vice President OE Bridgestone EMEA. “We are obviously delighted that Bridgestone is still the tyre on the record-breaking car, even after more than 20 years.”
Around 180,000 visitors discover the ID. family
Approximately 180,000 visitors flocked to the ‘Goodwood Festival of Speed’ over the course of the weekend. As well as the on-track action, Volkswagen also offered them a fascinating glimpse of the future of electromobility. The brand presented a first public foretaste of the ID.31, which in 2020 will be the first model in the new ID. family to hit the market. Not only that, but Volkswagen also provided an insight into more future variants of the fully-electric series, in the form of the ID. BUZZ and ID. VIZZION studies.
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