Mini leads charge on notorious track

A Mini E Race has lapped the notorious Nurburgring-Nordschleife circuit at speeds of up to 187km/h, with a lap of nine minutes, 51.45 seconds. Photo / Supplied

Tesla hasn't cornered the market on electric racers, if Mini's latest performance is anything to go by. For a Mini E Race has lapped the notorious Nurburgring-Nordschleife circuit at speeds of up to 187km/h, with a lap of nine minutes, 51.45 seconds, with DTM race drive Thomas Jager at the wheel.

To put that into perspective, a radical SR8LM managed the same feat in six minutes 48, a Porsche Cayman S driven by rally legend Walter Rohrl in eight minutes 4.08 seconds, and a turbo-charged VW Scirocco in nine minutes 35.

This 20.8km track was nicknamed the "green hell" by legendary racer Jackie Stewart, but Jager said the electric powertrain was up to the task. "The power of the electric motor has an incredible effect," he says, "as you can access its full reserves of torque at all times. Another element of this fascinating experience is the lack of noise from the drivetrain."

Though the Mini E engine was standard, with the same 150kW electric motor and 5088 lithium-ion battery cells as the road car, the racer was fitted with a special lightweight body featuring diffusers, a rear wing and a roll cage, while the brakes and tyres were built to race spec. The suspension was beefed up with adjusted springs and modifications to damping to cope with higher axle loads.

A longer gear ratio was tuned into the single-stage helical gearbox, with the control electronics and software programmed specifically for the task and driving the front wheels via a multi-plate limited slip diff.

No word yet, though, on how many laps were managed before the batteries drained.