Tesla Model S Plaid targets Nürburgring lap record

Tesla boss Elon Musk wants the Model S Plaid to join the elite group of high-performance vehicles that can lap the infamous Nürburgring Nordschleife in Germany in less than seven minutes.

Achieve that and the Plaid would also be the first four-door sedan to achieve the mark.

The 760kW tri-motor Model S Plaid starts rolling off the production line in California this month with the even crazier 820kW Model S Plaid+ due to make it into production early in 2022.

The Model S Plaid is officially claimed to have a 2.1 sec 0-100km/h time and a 322km/h top speed. However, that claim excludes what drag racers refer to as “rollout”, which is the time it takes for the car to get rolling up to about 5km/h; so, technically, the 2.1 seconds is the 5-100km/h time, with estimates suggesting the rollout can add up to 0.3 seconds to the 0-100km/h time.

The Plaid also comes with a wider wheel track – the left and right wheels are spaced further apart – than the standard Model S for better handling.

The Model S Plaid is not due in Australia until 2022 and is priced at about $216,000 drive-away (the pricing varies slightly state-to-state). The Plaid+ is priced at about $238,000 drive-away.

Speaking on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast Musk voiced confidence the Plaid could go faster than the hand-timed 7 min 13 sec achieved by a prototype in 2019 at the Nürburgring.

“We are trying on the Nürburgring to get to the low seven minute mark and with further improvements I think we could bust seven minutes on the Nürburgring, which would be a pretty wicked outcome,” he said.

 “I think there is potential to have a car as delivered beat seven minutes on the Nürburgring.”

The 20.8km track with more than 100 corners is commonly used by car manufacturers to prove the credentials of their performance models.

According to a listing published by Wikipedia, 10 production vehicles have undercut seven minutes on the circuit. They are all supercars or light-weight sports cars.

The fastest four-door production car is officially the Jaguar XE SV Project 8 at 7 min 18.361 sec.

Musk explained during the interview why the Nürburgring goal appealed to him: “The Nürburgring is not normal,” Musk said. “You can’t game it.”

However, he did say there was another performance parameter that was more important.

 “I think for everyday driving acceleration is what matters,” he said. “The light goes green and ‘boom’, who is across that intersection fastest?

“The new Plaid will do a sub-nine second quarter mile (400m) and an exit trap speed and a quarter mile of 155mp/h (250km/h).

“It can hit 60mp/h (96km/h) before it clears the intersection. It’s uncomfortably fast,” he laughed.

Musk also defended the new topless yoke that replaces the traditional steering wheel in the recent update to both the Model S and X.

“They use a yoke in Formula 1, they don’t have a steering wheel,” he said.

Rogan responded: “But you’re not on the highway in a Formula 1 car. I like driving like this,” he said mimicking resting his right hand at the top of the wheel.

Musk: “I think Autopilot is getting good enough you won’t need to drive most of the time unless you want to.

“Anyway, it looks awesome.”