Tesla Model S Plaid claims Nurburgring EV lap record

Tesla has claimed the electric vehicle lap record at the Nurburgring Nordschleife with the Model S Plaid, and has released footage of the car on its lap record run.

“[The] Tesla Model S Plaid [has] just set the official world speed record for a production car at the Nurburgring. Completely unmodified, directly from factory,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter. The American electric car set a quickest time of seven minutes 30.909 seconds, just over 11 seconds quicker than the seven minute, 42 second lap time set by the Porsche Taycan in 2019.

Tesla’s next attempt at another Nurburgring lap time will be with a modified Model S Plaid, said Musk, and this car will gain additional aero surfaces, carbon brakes and track-oriented tyres; items that can be added to Model S without Tesla’s involvement, he said. Development cars running those modifications were sighted on the Nordschleife in 2019.

The Tesla Model S Plaid has usurped the Porsche Taycan as the quickest EV around a lap of the Nurburgring Nordschleife

The Plaid variant tops the Model S range with a tri-motor powertrain setup, offering 1,020 hp in total; by comparison, the top Taycan Turbo S variant offers 761 hp and 1,050 Nm of torque from a two-motor setup, one on each axle. There was to be a Plaid+ variant of even higher specification, though this has been officially cancelled in June this year, according to CEO Musk, who said that the Plaid is “just so good”.

In terms of the production car record time around the Nordschleife, the accolade went to the Porsche 911 GT2 RS with the Manthey Performance Kit that is an option from the official Porsche Tequipment catalogue, which offers changes to the car’s chassis and aerodynamics, yielding a lap time of six minutes 43.300 seconds, or six minutes 38.835 based on the alternative timing standard that excludes a portion of the circuit.

This came after Mercedes-AMG clocked a time of six minutes 43.616 seconds with the GT Black Series, or six minutes 48.047 seconds including the long straight. The outright lap record is held by the Porsche 919 Hybrid Evo, with a lap time of five minutes 19.6 seconds around the Nurburgring Nordschleife.