THE MCMURTRY SPéIRLING SNATCHES ANOTHER RECORD - THE LAGUNA SECA REVERSE CORKSCREW HILLCLIMB!
Back in the day when a PlayStation 2 was the console to have, and Grand Turismo 3 was the racing game of games, one of the coolest tracks to race on was Laguna Seca, in particular thanks to the famed corkscrew section. It’s easily the coolest corkscrew on any racetrack out there, and it’s notoriously hard to navigate at 10/10ths. Luckily on the PS2 there was always a chance to reset. The actual racetrack is a lot less forgiving. It’s an interesting track with a long history. Laguna Seca Raceway is officially known as WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca and was built in 1957 on the site of a former U.S. Army training base in Monterey, California. Construction of the track took a relatively short period of just six months and the first race was held on November 9, 1957. The original track layout was 3.05 km long with a simple and challenging, design with nine turns. The track began to gain international recognition during the 1960s and 1970s, hosting a variety of motorsport events. One of the most significant changes came in 1988 when the track was extended to 3.1 km with 11 turns allowing more modern racing series like IndyCar and MotoGP.
The infamous corkscrew is the most famous part of Laguna Seca, it's a downhill, left-right-left chicane (Turns 8 and 8A) that drops an equivalent of six stories in elevation over just under 140 m. The corkscrew was part of the original track design, but it gained notoriety as cars became faster and technology advanced. The sudden drop combined with a blind crest makes it a proper test of driver skill and bravery. Drivers approach the corkscrew at high speed, only to be met with the steep plunge that makes precision and timing critical. In some rare cases, the track is used in the opposite direction, and that makes the corkscrew even harder to navigate because the way the car behaves changes completely. You clearly need massive power to get up it at race pace. A full reverse lap isn’t safely possible because of run-off areas and things like that, so to take advantage of the corkscrew, the track hosts short reverse hillclimb runs.
That’s where the already legendary McMurtry Spéirling enters the fray. You must have heard about this compact electric rocket by now, it’s blitzed records on every piece of tarmac it touches. It's the first fan car to be seen in competition for decades and it's stupendously quick thanks to a pair of electric motors powering each end. It produces 1,000 hp and it can generate 2,000 kg of downforce from a standstill which enables a 0-100 km/h launch in a mere 1.4 seconds. It has a top speed limited to 240 km/h, but that’s clearly for the safety of the driver inside the full carbon fibre single-seater. The development car has the record of being the fastest car ever up the hill at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, it’s the fastest production car over the quarter mile with a time of 7.97 seconds and after a session in Germany, the McMurtry Spéirling shattered the closed wheel track record at the iconic Hockenheimring. With the car running at 75% power and 75% downforce, it achieved a lap time of 1.24.43 on the 4.67 km F1 circuit which was 14.1 seconds faster than the Mercedes-AMG One and 3.907 seconds faster than the fastest DTM qualifying time in 2020. More recently, the Spéirling was shipped over to the good old US of Ato do a bit of showing off. At the hands of the official test pilot for the EV car company, Max Chilton, the McMurtry Spéirling set a new record time from the Start/Finish line to the other side of the corkscrew with a time of just 21.958 seconds. We wonder which record the little fan car has its sights set on next. We think they should get it to Simola, don’t ya?
Take a look at the YouTube video that shows off yet another stellar performance from the world's fastest production car, the electric McMurtry Spéirling fan car. Is there any record this thing won't shatter?: ONBOARD - McMurtry Spéirling fan car sets LAGUNA SECA Reverse Hillclimb RECORD | McMurtry Automotive
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