Tesla: Vehicles Model 3 Model 3: Driving Dynamics
My Model 3 Performance vs a street race truck.
Discussion in 'Model 3: Driving Dynamics' started by cOoTeR, Jan 5, 2020.
cOoTeR Member
#1 cOoTeR, Jan 5, 2020
This past weekend I went to two racing events. Friday night was a street style race setup in the shutdown area of the dragstrip. The surface has never had any racing prep done to it. It was 1/8 mile and started by a flashlight. If you watch street outlaws you might recognize the area and the truck I raced. The truck is built for street racing. It has two giant turbos going into a giant engine and two massive tires at the back. It had raced on the street outlaws show a couple times. We raced twice and we each won once. Here are the videos of the 2 races with 2 camera angles for each race.
Atomic1der Member
#2 Atomic1der, Jan 5, 2020
Just think how fast they will be after 100 years of aftermarket tuning and improvements! I know the first EVs were developed in early 1800s, so they should be much further along, but cheap oil, and heavy, dirty battery tech, kind of meant no interest except for niche markets.
DrtyJrze Member
#3 DrtyJrze, Jan 5, 2020
Idc about drag racing, but it must suck to spend all that time/money creating a one trick pony and barely lose/win to a four door stock sedan.
Love x 1
jjrandorin Moderator, Model 3, Tesla Energy Forums
Riverside Co. CA
#4 jjrandorin, Jan 5, 2020
DrtyJrze said: ↑
And would lose to a 5 Seater SUV:
Model X Performance includes:
Quicker acceleration: 0-60 mph in 2.7s
byeLT4 Member
#5 byeLT4, Jan 5, 2020
He 'barely' won because he let off as soon as he passed the 3 (@ 2 seconds before the finish line) and he still had enough momentum to stay ahead. I'm not trying to take anything away from the Tesla, I'm right on the fence of a new 3P or used Performance S, but, this one trick pony does his trick really well.....
byeLT4 said: ↑
Yet he lost the first race...
Urbancowboy Member
#7 Urbancowboy, Jan 5, 2020
It would have been a bloodbath at anything longer than 1/8. That distance is incredibly favorable to a performance Tesla against almost anything.
raptor5244 Member
#8 raptor5244, Jan 5, 2020
The funny part is the Tesla owner has to wait for the for the truck to do all the prep work. Line lock, burnouts to heat the tires. Then the truck has to spool up the turbos, hook on launch and make sure not to miss a shift.
The Tesla M3P just inches up to the line and stomps on the accelerator.
The Tesla takes all the fun out of drag racing. No noise, no burnout, no skill needed to launch or shift. You just plant your foot and hope the other car can't chase you down by the end of the run.
It will be interesting to see how the auto industry will add character to performance EVs.
raptor5244 said: ↑
To some people winning/performance is all the character needed, the rest is pointless theatrics.
#10 byeLT4, Jan 5, 2020
True, spinnin' ain't winnin'
earthwormjim Member
#11 earthwormjim, Jan 6, 2020
1/8 mile isn't a good test for 4WD vs 2WD, it's too short, driver reaction times are way too much of a factor too. You can see the Tesla driver reacted much faster each time. It's much easier since you're not dealing with a clutch and brake pedal in a Tesla.
If you compared actual time measurements with 1ft rollout, I doubt the truck ever lost.
However my Tesla has made me view my BMW M3 and swapped E30 wagon in a new light. I almost feel like what's the point with those cars anymore? All of this work, and only one of them is slightly faster than my SR+, and definitely not faster if you want to just suddenly take off with no warning.
holmgang Active Member
#12 holmgang, Jan 6, 2020
Urbancowboy said: ↑
bpobill Member
#13 bpobill, Jan 6, 2020
The amount of Tesla cringe in this thread is off the charts. Im not knocking against the OP, it looked like it was fun to race. Im cringing at some of the responses. I love my model 3 but it takes zero skill to drive. I could put a kid behind the wheel that can reach the pedals and run 11's. It's a sweet truck and it still took the Tesla in the 1/8 where our sweet spot is. In the 1/4 it unless that truck had a catastrophic failure you would need binoculars to see the Tesla. Good race OP, I enjoyed the video.
bhzmark Active Member
#14 bhzmark, Jan 6, 2020
Tesla takes all the fun out of drag racing.
Sorry I disagree:
It is so much fun:
1) beating tire-burning, smoke-belching, noisemakers,
2) using summon in the staging lanes,
3) autopiloting past the pickups towing trailers on the way home -- leaving shoe polish on for full effect.
lots of fun
#15 raptor5244, Jan 6, 2020
bhzmark said: ↑
Dead wrong.
way more fun than racing ICE.
Funny. Fun is subjective, maybe I should have said, skill or sport.
#16 DrtyJrze, Jan 6, 2020
This is funny. Out of all motorsports, drag racing requires the least amount of skill...
It's okay to enjoy the strip. But let's not act like the drivers are world class athletes performing impossibly difficult and complex physical acts.
If you look at drag racing at its highest level, (not street cars) and consider the complete picture. Mechanics, engineering, danger, physicality, etc. There is a lot of skill going on in this video.
#18 cOoTeR, Jan 6, 2020
earthwormjim said: ↑
Have you looked at a drag car recently? Most (including this one) are automatics, to launch them the driver holds the gas pedal to the floor while holding down a button, when the light comes in they release the button. Then as they go down the track there are buttons on the wheel they can use to help in the race instead of moving their right foot. One is often referred to as a scramble button if the car is maintaining traction and they need more power to win the race they can press that button. The winner of a drag race is who crosses the finish line first not who went faster. We both left at pretty much the same time both races.
Drag racing is all about the car setup. It's funny I win a lot of races and have a blast doing it but there's always people trying to downplay it. With statements like "teslas take no skill to drive" or "Tesla's are boring cars to drive". People spend LOTS of money trying to make their cars easier to drive so they can go fast with things like 2 steps, ignition controllers, wide sticky tires, trans brakes, power glide transmissions etc and everyone of those mods makes the cars less usable on the street. The truck was built solely for 1/8 mile street racing and pretty much nothing on it is street legal. I showed up in my car with full interior and raced all night against anyone that would line up against me then drove it home. I drive back the next morning to enter in the no prep race. Due to a low racer turnout the races were canceled but I made at least 26 passes with 19 if them being back to back to see how much the Tesla can hotlap before going slower. The truck only raced twice that night against me then went back in the trailer. The truck was entered on Saturday but when they started it up in the morning they blew it up and spent Saturday working on the truck and cleaning up the oil spill. I can't help that the car it's fast and built to be dependable that's kind of why I bought it. I could have built a "crap" box racecar for a lot less money and been faster. But I'd spend more time working on the car them enjoying driving it.
It takes a lot more skill to ride a jockey shift motorcycle than drive a car. That doesn't mean the jockey shift motorcycle is any better, all you get from it is being able to say you did it.
There's always the statements that pop up like "if this was a 1/4 mile race the truck would have destroyed you". If this was an aerobatics competition a paper airplane would have beat me. But this wasn't a 1/4 mile or an aerobatics competition. This was an 1/8 mile drag race on a street surface what the truck was built to do and I was able to run door to door with it on its home track. I'm pretty happy with being able to do that. When I do half mile racing everyone uses the excuse "if you were on a prepped surface that other car would have destroyed you." But last I checked there were no prepped half mile tracks that I could find. The next thing I hear a lot is "the Tesla would suck on a road course". But I've gone to the road course and had a blast there keeping up with some cars that should be way faster and people claim that the other drivers must be really bad if I was able to keep up.
"It's 2wd so it's not an accurate comparison argument" doesn't hold much weight with me either. That just means it's an inferior design for the task at hand. When I see a GTR make a sub 10sec pass I don't think "well it's AWD so it doesn't count", I think "that's a fast car". Eventually people will realize that the Tesla Model 3 Performance is a very fast well rounded car that can be competitive in multiple disciplines for your average driver.
At the end of the day racing is about which car is faster over an agreed course not which is harder to drive. I enjoy racing whether I win or lose. I often try to get races setup with faster cars to see how close my car is to theirs in terms of speed. Racing in the Tesla it's fun and I doubt anyone who says otherwise actually has tried racing in it.
A unicycle would take a lot more skill and be more sporting than a car in drag racing but it's not going to win much. You gotta pick the right tool for the task at hand.
cOoTeR said: ↑