An electric racing car drove around Daytona for the first time

The annual 24-hour race at Daytona International Speedway in Florida began on Saturday afternoon. And this year’s run has been pretty good so far – although there is still almost seven hours to go as of this writing. This year is the 59th edition of a race that has become, at least unofficially, the start of the racing season for many. But on Friday, the 5.6 km (5.6 km) road course tried something new, when an electric racing car took to the track for a few demonstration laps – the first time an electric vehicle from race did. With any luck, this could be a herald of things to come as the sport’s organizers explore the potential of an American series in the next few years.

It was not an open-wheeled single-seater like the cars that race in Formula E. Instead, it was designed for a new category called ETCR, for electric touring cars: think heavily modified road cars, but with electric powertrains. In this case, this road car was a Hyundai Veloster N. Hyundai contested the TCR (non-electric) class with the Veloster N, but these all come with 2.0-liter internal combustion engines driving the front wheels. .

The ETCR rulebook is much less restrictive, and as a result the Veloster N ETCR is much more exotic, with not one but four electric motors coupled so that each rear wheel is powered by a pair of motors. Peak power is an impressive 670 hp (500 kW) – as much as the new hybrid prototypes that will race at Le Mans from this year – drawing power from a 68 kWh battery sourced from Williams Advanced Engineering (which also supplies from batteries to Formula E for this. third generation car in the series).

This makes it a difficult car to drive fast, according to Augusto Farfus, a professional racing driver who is working with Hyundai to develop the Veloster N ETCR car and who drove the demonstration laps at Daytona on Friday.

“The biggest difference is the noise, of course; we drive a car that is pretty much completely silent. You can just hear the tires. And for me the biggest difference, apart from the weight of the car – you get used to it pretty quickly – are the two rear wheels, which are not connected by anything. So we have four engines, two at the rear left and two at the rear right, but there is no rear differential like in a normal race car, “Farfus tells Ars.

“It’s a new challenge for the driver, because every variation you have on the application of the brakes, on the car’s balance on the brakes, becomes a major problem. You don’t have an engine brake, which overcomes some of these issues in a normal combustion car. So for me that’s the biggest difference. You approach corners extremely fast, because 500 kilowatts accelerate the car quite quickly, so you end up approaching a corner in complete silence and super fast, ”said Farfus.

ETCR races promise to be action-packed, too, with short sprint races (6.2 miles / 10 km) scheduled for the Pure ETCR series set to begin in Europe later this year. “You have to drive the car pretty hard. There is no power management at the moment – there is no lift and hill or energy saving as seen in different electric formulas So that puts extra pressure on the drivers and the engineers, because we have to develop a real racing car with a real sprinting spirit which is to attack every lap, ”Farfus told me.

When Pure ETCR debuts this year, the Veloster N ETCR will be joined by EV drivers from three other brands: Seat, Alfa Romeo and MG. IMSA, the organization that sanctions the Rolex 24 at Daytona (and top sports car racing in the United States) is not quite ready to announce a North American ETCR series, but the chairman of the ‘IMSA John Doonan sounded upbeat when asked about the prospects for such a series. something is happening.

“We want to be the platform. We want to be the opportunity in the markets that make the most sense for manufacturing partners so that the work that Marcelo [Lotti, president of World Sporting Consulting and the driving force behind both TCR and ETCR] and his team made it happen is the first step. Now it is our responsibility to work with our existing manufacturers to see what they would like to do to take advantage of this opportunity, ”Doonan said.

“We are delighted and honored that this is the first time that a fully electric racing car has performed a demonstration lap – certainly not in competition, but we are delighted to be a part of it today. When an automaker uses one of our platforms for telling a story from a marketing point of view, or from a new technology point of view, it’s very much our overall corporate strategy, ”Doonan told Ars.

List image by LAT Images