Former Formula 1 and IndyCar driver Max Chilton rewrote the Goodwood record books by hurling the impressive all-electric McMurtry Automotive Speirling fan car up the hill, beating the next-fastest super car by six seconds and smashing a 23-year-old record previously held by the McLaren MP4/13 F1 car.
This year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed hosted the emergence of what has got to be the most eye-catching and impressive automotive spectacle. There was more emphasis on electric machines this time around. But amongst all the insanity, there was something which you truly had to see to believe, and what collectively made automotive and motorsport fans gasp in disbelief.
The small McMurtry Automotive organization turned up to Goodwood in 2022 with their eyes quietly set on a record. The company has a “radical vision” according to its website, wanting to “revolutionize ideas of what a car can be” through the “superiority of small.”
Before this year’s event, there weren’t many who considered the idea that this all-electric and somewhat strange little car could do something special, let alone officially take the historical record.
McMurtry Speirling Became An Unexpected Record Breaker
Before this year’s festival, the official record books continued to have Nick Heidfeld as the record holder courtesy of his 41.6s time in a McLaren MP4/13 in 1999. Many thought that time couldn’t possibly fall owing to the later ban on contemporary Formula 1 machinery completing in the shootout – the timed category of the festival.
Nevertheless, the unofficial record holder was Romain Dumas who took the electric Volkswagen ID.R up the hill in 39.9s in 2019. But this time was set in the Saturday qualifying session and was therefore not an officially counted time. He failed to replicate that time on Sunday and couldn’t beat Heidfeld’s run in the McLaren F1 car.
This time around though former Marussia F1 driver Chilton has surpassed both of these times, on the Saturday and remarkably on the Sunday when it mattered too, pulling out an unbelievable 39.08s run. For all those watching the run, it was a truly astonishing and jaw-dropping sight. Bending physics is somewhat of an understatement to describe the dynamics of the small batmobile-like machine.
“I never thought that was going to happen,” Chilton said immediately after his record-breaking achievement. “If someone had said, ‘one day you’re going to beat every single person that’s ever gone up that hill,’ I wouldn’ t have believed you. It’s a real honor. “I didn’t sleep last night. I got one hour’s sleep because I was so stressed. Pressure makes diamonds, as they say!”
More On The Impressive McMurtry Speirling
The Speirling is a truly unique re-think of a high-performance track car. Early Formula 1 cars of the 1950s and 1960s provide the basis for its dinky footprint, with the McMurtry’s narrow proportions being an enormous helping hand on the narrow single-lane Goodwood hill climb.
Chilton could therefore exploit the extreme downforce right to the hay bales and grass, barely losing any minimum speed during the corners as the twin fans, of 80 horsepower each, sucked the car into the road. This method of downforce production makes the car appear unrelentingly glued to the track, perhaps comparable to a modern Scalextric car which each utilizes a magnet at the rear to keep the back end of the car from coming loose.
The fans reportedly produce around 2000kg of added downforce from a standstill – double the car’s weight! This enables the Speirling to arrive at corners at insane speeds that are enough to force hardcore fans of fast cars to rethink what ‘fast’ actually is.
It’s one of only a few cars ever made to tip the scale with a 1:1 power-to-weight ratio, and with the car’s estimated weight of around 1100kg (1.1 tonnes/2,425Ib), this equates to around the equivalent of 1,000 bhp (1,104 hp) produced by the two electric motors. On an aerodynamic front, the car’s size gives away the designers’ main aim for the Speirling – to be able to slice through the air cleanly with as little drag as possible.
Its single-seat, closed cockpit design was originally debuted as an exceptionally loud concept at the 2021 Festival of Speed with a shark fin behind the driver, and no rear wing. However, for 2022, the car was trimmed with a full-width, thin rear wing to produce a modicum of downforce separately from the fans.
The Speirling Fan Car Sent Shockwaves At 2022 Goodwood
All this enabled it to reach a speed of 149mph on the 1.1-mile hay-bale-lined hill, covering the first 100m of the course in 3.51s thanks to its eye-watering 0-60mph time of 1.5s. It obliterated its opponents in the shootout, taking the glory by over 6s to the next fastest car, the Porsche 718 GT4 ePerformance driven by Richard Leitz.
All the driving duty credit for the Speirling’s incredible run shouldn’t exclusively go to Chilton however, as British Hillclimb championship leader Alex Summers stepped in for Chilton on Saturday, with him away attending a wedding, and Summers posted an equally impressive record-breaking 39.14 s run – albeit one that would have been unofficial.
The 2019 Volkswagen ID.R driver Dumas meanwhile finished the sixth shootout in the 2,000 hp all-electric Ford Supervan 4, with four electric cars in the top ten of the shootout. The 2022 Festival of Speed has well-and-truly elevated McMurtry Automotive onto the map, and who knows what the Gloucestershire-based British outfit will come up with next. All we do know is that we’ll be seeing a road-legal Speirling very soon indeed.
Sources: McMurtry Automotive, Goodwood Festival Of Speed
