The Porsche 918 Spyder is capable of reducing a grown man to giggles when it’s hooned around an open runway, but is it faster than a Red Bull Air Race plane? German television show GRIP put the 887-horsepower hybrid hypercar up against a Zivko Edge 540 V3 racing plane to see which was the fastest.
Hit the “gear” icon and click on “Subtitles” for YouTube’s occasionally hilarious English auto-translations. Races start around 6:30.
GRIP host Matthias Malmedie put the Porsche on a 1.5-mile runway up against the Matthias Dolderer’s aerobatic aircraft. You’d expect the airplane to be faster by default, but it also takes a bit longer to turn around and get going in the other direction.
Meanwhile, the Martini-liveried 918 comes with Porsche’s 90 lbs lighter Weissach package and (given the extreme giddiness of the host) appears to be joy in car form. It shoots up from 0 to 60 mph in a mere 2.6 seconds with a top speed of 210 mph. Clearly, its only match is...an airplane?
The featherweight Red Bull Air Race plane gets up to 250 mph in no time and has a top speed of around 267 mph, making it a worthy opponent for Porsche’s most bonkers hypercar. Pilots can experience up to 10 G in a turn during an air race.
The first race ends up being closer than most of these car vs. plane gimmick races, but sadly, the car still loses. Watching the loser emit a stream of “scheiße!” as a passenger in the winner’s plane, however, is priceless.