Totalcar – Magazine – McMurtry’s weird little Batmobile takes you on a journey

The mountain racing of the Goodwood Festival of Speed ​​is a spectacle rather than a real race – legendary race cars and compelling world news alternate with audiences live and online – but there are those who care about the system.

This is the company called McMurtry Automotive, which built a special and unique race car, the Spérling, to go faster than anyone else on the special road of just 1.86 kilometers. The electric car weighs about a ton and, according to its makers, works out at about a thousand horsepower per ton. You can reach 96 km/h in about 1.5 seconds from a standstill and a top speed of 241 km/h.

It also features a somewhat rarely used technical solution: two fans suck from the bottom of the car, which are said to generate a clamping force of up to two tons. This is of course not a new invention, Gordon Murray had already applied it to the 1978 Brabham BT46, but it did not spread: after Niki Lauda won the Swedish Grand Prix, all similar active aerodynamic elements were banned in F1.

3

Exhibition: McMurtry Spérling 2022

Although no one has officially gone to Goodwood to set a record, being the fastest in the field is no easy feat. The current record holder is the Volkswagen ID.R race car, which was developed for such a short mountain run, and on Pikes PeakIt has since set an unattainable record Still in 2018. On the very short track at Goodwood, VW has a record 39.9sec, which I want to fix this year with Spérling and Max Chillton at the wheel – and it will be clear at the weekend if that will work for them. .