- The Lucid Air Sapphire was the fastest car at Car and Driver’s annual Lightning Lap competition.
- Porsche’s range-topping Taycan Turbo GT sedan was 1.6 seconds slower than the Lucid.
- Mazda’s MX-5 Miata Club was the slowest at the 4.1-mile Virginia International Raceway.
Electric cars are fast in a straight line, sure, but all that weight means they’re hopeless on a twisty racetrack. That’s what we’re often led to believe, but judging by the results of Car and Driver’s latest annual Lightning Lap shootout, it’s simply not true. In the 18th running of the event, the four-door Lucid Air electric sedan kicked sand in the faces of two mid-engined monsters, including the Lamborghini Revuelto.
Admittedly, we’re talking here about the Lucid Air Sapphire, which is a world away from the base-spec Air. It has carbon brakes, a 1,234 hp (1,251 PS / 920 kW) triple-motor powertrain, and can reach 60 mph (97 kmh) in 1.89 seconds. But it’s still a big, fat (5,336 lbs / 2,420 kg) four-door businessman’s express that beat a two-seat, 1,001 hp (1,015 PS) V12 hybrid supercar by over a second across the 4.1 miles (6.6 km) of Virginia International Raceway.
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The Sapphire lapped VIR’s Grand Course configuration in 2:40.2, versus 2:41.3 for the third-placed Lambo and 2:40.9 for the second-placed Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 RS. And this was no ordinary GT4 RS, if ever there was such a thing. It was equipped with the Manthey Racing package, an absurdly expensive $60k suspension and aero package that’s designed to make the already track-focused RS razor sharp in a circuit situation.
Lucid also scalped another Porsche, this one much closer in spirit to the Sapphire, but again pitched as a track weapon. The Taycan Turbo GT couldn’t go faster than 2:41.8. C/D’s timing equipment also showed the Sapphire clocked 170 mph (274 kmh) on VIR’s Front Straight, making it one of only four cars in Lightning Lap history to top 170 mph there. The other three were all McLarens.
What we won’t know until the March/April issue of the magazine comes out is whether the testers actually enjoyed themselves driving the Lucid, or whether it was all speed and no smiles. But we can be fairly sure they had a riot in the Mazda MX-5 Miata Club even though its 3:15.6 time made it the slowest car present by over 5 seconds.
Take a look at the table below and tell us whose performance impressed you most and which left you disappointed.