The madlads did it: world’s fastest EV drives upside-down & beat an F1 car, too
The McMurtry Speirling, a tiny 1,000hp electric racecar known for smashing records, has now broken two new records in the same day, smashing a 20-year record at Top Gear’s test track and becoming the first(*) car to drive upside down.
The McMurtry Speirling is an interesting concept. Rather than working like the vast majority of other cars do, which simply send power to the wheels to drive the car forward, the Speirling sends some of its power to giant fans that suck air out from under the car, creating a vacuum effect.
At first glance this seems like a strange idea – why would you want to devote effort to pushing your car down, rather than forward?
What this does is increase the car’s apparent weight without increasing its mass. This means that the tires push down to the ground, sticking better, and giving you more contact patch to turn, accelerate or brake the vehicle. But since the car’s actual mass hasn’t increased, it isn’t any harder to accelerate in any direction – so you can just go faster.
Most cars approach this concept by adding wings and other aerodynamic elements to the car to increase “aerodynamic grip,” channeling air upwards as the car increases in speed.
Some cars approach this more aggressively than others – Formula One vehicles, for example, have obscenely large aerodynamic elements all around the vehicles, giving them incredible grip at high speed. Engineers have long bragged that F1 cars could drive upside down, at top speed, where they produce more than 1G worth of downforce… the only problem would be getting there, because they produce less downforce at lower speeds due to their use of traditional aerodynamic elements.
But these traditional aerodynamic features vary in their “aerodynamic efficiency,” because if you’re pushing air upwards, that means you’re applying force to something other than making the car go forward, which adds drag and slows you down (overall, you still go faster – but not as much faster as you could without drag).
There’s only so much aerodynamically efficient work you can do with traditional aerodynamic elements, generally via lowering ride heights and adding diffusers or other underbody elements that help to keep air moving smoothly under the vehicle, thus lowering air pressure and turbulence underneath.
So, the goal is to try to find as much downforce as you can in the most aerodynamically efficient way, and to have as much of that downforce working at lower speeds as you can. And there’s one idea that can do this, which has gotten a little bit of play in the past, and that the McMurtry Speirling uses to great effect today: a “fan car.”
The fan car concept has existed in motorsport since the 1970s, first appearing with the Chaparral 2J, a boxy monstrosity which competed in 1970 but was outlawed from competition due to its obscene aerodynamic advantages. Later, Brabham brought a fan car to F1 in 1978 and won its first race by a huge margin, but the concept was also immediately banned from competition there.
By sucking air out from under the vehicle, it creates a low-pressure area underneath the car, which is then pushed downwards by higher-pressure air from above. To make this effect work, the Speirling has incredibly low ride height and side skirts around the vehicle, letting little air in to spoil the vacuum pressure it’s creating underneath the car.
The net effect is that McMurtry says the Speirling can create 2,000kg of downforce on a 1,000kg car – adding double the car’s apparent weight without a change in mass. So not only can it stick to the ground better, it could even theoretically do it upside down ( or maybe not so theoretically – more on that in a minute).
Besides making a lot of noise (100dB) and spewing a lot of dust out the back and making an electric car look like it has an exhaust – what this does is it lets the Speirling completely annihilate every car ever on several tracks it has appeared on. See our previous reporting on how it smashed the record at Goodwood in 2022 (including a bonkers video of it looking like a slot car as it does so). It’s also capable of going 0-60 in 1.4 seconds, which is much quicker than what traction limits normal cars to.
McMurtry added another track to its list today, setting a 0:55.9 second lap around Top Gear’s test track, a repurposed airport runway which has been used by the show to compare the laptimes of many vehicles over the year. The previous 59-second record was owned by Renault’s F1 car from 2004, the only car to ever drive a sub-minute lap around the track, and the Speirling’s time is 13 seconds quicker than the fastest road-legal car to take the track, the Aston Martin Valkyrie.
This also beats the fastest electric car around the track, the Ford SuperVan, a heavily modified Ford eTransit which we’ve covered winning performances of before. The SuperVan did the track in 1:05.3, so the Speirling is almost a full ten seconds faster. (We’d love to see what Top Gear could do with a Lotus Evija, though)
But that’s not the only record the Speirling set today. For some reason, the company decided to announce two records on the same day, with the latter being one that makes the dream of “a car that can drive upside down” a reality for the first time ever.
There’s a bit of an asterisk on that, because a similar stunt has been done before when Hot Wheels created a real-life loop-de-loop and two rally drivers drove their cars around it, thus driving upside down for a moment. But those cars didn’t actually sustain upside-down driving for any period of time, merely used momentum to get there (not to say it isn’t an awesome stunt).
The Speirling, instead, managed to rotate upside down and stay there for a full ten seconds, during which it accelerated and then stopped, showing that control of the vehicle is possible even while upside down. In contrast, the rally cars in the Hot Wheels stunt would have had zero control over the vehicle at the zenith of the loop since there are no upward forces acting on the car at that moment.
The stunt is unfortunately less impressive than we’d like to see – imagine how cool it would be to see the car driving at high speed while upside down – but given it was a world-first attempt, that building an actual upside down road and a method to get the car onto it would be quite difficult and expensive, and that there’s an actual driver inside whose safety needs to be taken into account, we understand the need for caution here.
Nevertheless, it’s bonkers to see a car, that thing that you see every day planted firmly onto the ground where it belongs, doing exactly 180º opposite of what it’s always been doing every other time you’ve seen it.
So now, that old idea about whether a high-downforce car can drive upside down is no longer theory, it’s reality. It may not have gone far or fast, but it did go, completely under its own power, completely upside down.
McMurtry says that it would like to go further from here – the company called this a “proof of concept” and “perhaps just the beginning of what’s possible.” “With a longer inverted track or a suitable tunnel, we may be able to drive even further,” said co-founder Thomas Yates today.
So… stay tuned for more?
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Watch the world’s quickest electric car drive upside-down in a world first
Watch the world’s quickest EV beat an F1 car and then drive upside-down
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Based on the excellent Hyundai IONIQ 5 N platform, Vanwall gives its Vandervell H-GT a high-performance aesthetic makeover inspired by the classic Lancia Delta HF Integrale. But what makes this body kit a genuine “high-performance” upgrade isn’t the way it makes the car look: it’s the 500 lb. weight savings!
Developed by Austrian racing team ByKOLLES Racing and invoking the name of a 1950s Formula 1 team, the Vandervell H-GT is essentially a new Hyundai IONIQ 5 N in aggressive, Lancia Delta-inspired carbon-fiber bodywork that the company claims gives the car an, “unprecedented weight optimization in this vehicle category.”
The H-GT’s new “thin wall” carbon fiber body slashes the car’s weight by over 230 kg (507 lbs.), which means ByKOLLES’ new Vandervell can do anything that Hyundai’s “special” IONIQ 5 N hot hatch can do. Only faster.
Raw carbon, raw performance
Mechanically identical to the IONIQ 5 N and packing the same 641 hp (with N Grin Boost) and 568 lb-ft of torque. That’s enough to launch the Hyundai version of the hatchback from a standstill to 60 mph in just 3.0 seconds.
After its 500 lb. crash diet, it’s even quicker.
The car was first announced in 2023 (along with the renderings shown, below), when ByKOLLES was competing in the World Endurance Championship (WEC) with what used to be called an LMP car – but they keep changing the names of these things so it could be a Daytona Prototype, Hypercar, or even a 24 Hour LeMans Wonkavator by now.
The important part, however, is that a few of these cars have now broken cover, with ex-Formula 1 supremo, Bernie Ecclestone, having been seen trying the new-age Lancia on for size.
The Vanwall Vandervell website still shows the same €128,000 ($145,405, as I type this) price tag and specs it did in 2023, which either means they haven’t updated it in a while, were really, really good at pricing the thing in the first place, or both.
That’s presumably on top of the IONIQ N’s already hefty $66,100 price tag.
Electrek’s Take
This isn’t the first time my weird love of Lancia models from the 70s and 80s has been highlighted on these digital pages, but even my biased sensibilities can see that this is a unique, ultra-luxury statement piece that offers supercar levels of performance with the sort of daily driver dependability that Hyundai has offered for years.
It’s an incredible machine – and the only thing they did wrong, in my book, was not show one in Martini colors on its debut.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Vanwall Vandervell; CarExpert.
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I had the chance to drive the new 2025 RS Audi GT e-tron for a few hours in the Nevada desert and for a few minutes on a race track.
Here are my thoughts.
Audi has stepped up its EV game in a big way with its new electric vehicles based on the PPE platform. Over the last year, I drove both the Q6, an electric SUV based on the PPE, and the A6, an electric sedan based on the same platform, and I came out extremely impressed.
I think those vehicles are going to take Audi to the next level when it comes to EVs.
But they are not the EVs pushing Audi’s limits; that’s still its flagship Audi GT e-tron, now with a top-performance RS version launched with the 2025 model-year refresh.
The new GT e-tron, which is built on the same platform as the Porsche Taycan, is more than a model year refresh; it’s a mid-cycle update, but not a normal one. While mid-cycle updates often focus on design changes and adding a few features, the 2025 GT e-tron looks very similar to the previous version, but it’s significantly different under the hood.
The design has been slightly updated with a honeycomb grill, a few new wheel designs, and a very cool new motorsport-inspired rear reflector.
I think that the rear diffuser with vertical reflector looks sick on the RS GT:
It still looks like the same sporty vehicle, but more refined, especially the RS version.
Speaking of the RS version, it’s now the most powerful Audi ever with almost 1,000 horsepower (912hp). That’s thanks to new motors with increased copper density, resulting in more power and lower weight:
An added bonus is that they can also regen at a higher rate of 400kW, which quite impressive. I prefer the regen modes in the Q6/A6, but the 400kW capacity has some incredible stopping power. That’s 0.45G at max deceleration.
It’s useful when you launch the RS GT e-tron from 0 to 60 mph in 2.4 seconds with launch control is engaged. I did a few quick acceleration and fast launches in the desert and on a small racetrack outside of Las Vegas and you need to make sure your head is firmly on the headrest.
Audi also has a “push-to-pass” power boost button on the steering wheel that unleashes an extra 94 hp (70 kW) for 10 seconds. The German automaker emphasized that this is repeatable. I didn’t test that, but I can say that I tested the RS GT e-tron on the racetrack after a dozen people did with the same car, and I was impressed by the capacity at about 50% state-of-charge.
Now, if you look closely at this launch, you might have noticed how the front end of the vehicle adjusted itself down after shooting up from the launch.
That’s thanks to the new advanced adaptive air suspension with with damper control.
It’s extremely fast and impressive. I am pretty sure they could make the car jump and down with the suspension if they wanted to, but they don’t.
The suspension is so advanced you don’t need an anti-roll bar. It adjust so fast that it is able to keep the vehicle solid and balance even in high speed corners. It felt effortless driving somewhat aggressively on the desert roads outside of Las Vegas, but Audi enabled a very cool test on the track.
They had me do a lap without the active suspension’s cornering compensation activated and then I did the same lap with it enabled. It was night and day. In fact, it felt like cheating. I’m no track driver, but the second lap felt incredibly easy, almost as if the car was on rails.
Here are the different suspension profiles:
The new 2025 GT e-tron also has 12% more battery capacity resulting in up to 51 more miles of range depending on the configurations and wheel choices. It results in 278 miles of range mac for the RS and 300 miles of range for the S.
As usual, one of the most impressive things about Audi’s EVs is the fast-charging capacity, and the new 2025 GT improves on that thanks to the updated battery pack:
That results in 10 to 80% charging in about 18 minutes.
All that performance doesn’t come cheap. The S e-tron GT starts at $125,500, and the RS e-tron GT Performance starts at $167,000. The version that I tested with closer to $180,000 with options.
Electrek’s Take
This was actually my first time driving an Audi GT e-tron so I can’t compare it to the previous version, but I came out impressed.
With Audi, I love their quiet, comfortable luxury with the A6 and Q6. This is not that. It’s a performance vehicle, but it’s still a 4-door, 4-seater, with decent space in the back, so Audi clearly also focused on comfort, and you can feel it.
I can see this being a great daily driver even though the cabin wasn’t as quiet as the previously mentioned vehicles and you could feel more vibration.
The Audi GT e-tron really shines when you start driving more aggressively. Like I previously said, the active suspension’s cornering suspension is truly impressive and makes things easier.
Though I’d note that, unlike the active suspension in the latest Taycan, the one in the Audi GT does allow a bit of roll to give you some road feedback. I appreciated that.
I also appreciated the vehicle’s steering. Again, I can’t compare it to previous versions, but the ratio was reportedly reduced and it did feel short and precise.
The lower weight and higher battery capacity are also appreciated as it can be hard for people to buy an electric vehicle at $100,000+ with fewer than 250 miles of range, which was the case before this 2025 update.
Now, to be fair, Audi put me in a fully loaded RS GT e-tron Performance that cost closer to $200,000. It was incredible, but I don’t know how the car performs with the base S GT e-tron. I’m sure you can have fun with it too and you get more range.
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A Unifor union rep at the Ontario production facility where GM builds the all electric Chevy BrightDrop van is temporarily halting production of the commercial EV due to slow sales – but with massive discounts, Costco member programs, and state and utility incentives driving costs well below its diesel competitors, it might still be the best EV deal you can get.
Donald Trump’s planned automotive tariffs may have been put on hold, but the uncertainty they caused just from being threatened has caused waves of damage across a dozen industries – and that’s causing companies like GM to expect more pain in the near term.
To that end, GM says it’s making, “operational and employment adjustments to balance inventory and align production schedules with current demand,” at the CAMI Assembly plant in Ontario, Canada, where it makes BrightDrop vans. The layoffs will begin on April 14, according to the union, when production will temporarily cease until October 2025.
During the downtime, GM says it plans to retool the plant to prepare for production of the (presumably updated) 2026 model year BrightDrop vans.
“(The production pause is) a crushing blow to hundreds of working families in Ingersoll and the surrounding region who depend on this plant,” said Unifor National President, Lana Payne, in a statement. “General Motors must do everything in its power to mitigate job loss during this downturn, and all levels of government must step up to support Canadian auto workers and Canadian-made products.”
GM reported sales of just 274 BrightDrop vans in the first quarter of 2025. That’s up about 7% from the 256 sold in Q1 of 2024 – but still really. Definitely. Not. A lot.
When production resumes in October, the plant will operate on a single shift, which will result in reduced manufacturing rate for GM’s commercial vans and the indefinite layoff of nearly 500 union factory workers, according to Unifor.
Electrek’s Take
We’ve covered the $30,000-plus discounts currently available for Chevy BrightDrop customers. Those discounts are already enough to take the $84,235 BrightDrop 400 eAWD EV all the way down to $52,985 – and that’s before utility incentives like ComEd’s commercial EV rebates (which the Chevy van qualifies for) can bring it down even further.
ComEd is offering up to $30,000 in rebates (per vehicle) if you snap up the Class 3/11,000 GVWR version … meaning Chicago area fleets can electrify their delivery operations for much, much less than they probably think.
Check your state and local rebates at this link to see what a BrightDrop might cost you in your state, then let us know if you can think of a better EV deal in the comments.
SOURCE: Unifor; via Reuters.
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