Even if you don’t love Teslas, being a sore loser is definitely worse than being a fanboy. The driver of a Tesla Model 3 Performance equipped with the new Track Mode made it to second place at the Global Time Attack Super Lap at Buttonwillow Raceway Park in Buttonwilliow, California over the weekend with a time of 2:00.78. But halfway into the podium ceremony, he was told his run was successfully challenge by a fellow competitor, Electrek reports. Electricity, you see, was not listed as an approved “fuel.”
[Update 11/13/18 1:15 p.m: Global Time Attack reached out and set the record straight with how things actually turned out that day. Mountain Pass Performance was disqualified on day one for having a guest driver when someone jokingly suggested they should be DQ’d for being electric. GTA agreed to pull the driver during the podium celebration for maximum attention and Mountain Pass Performance played up the event in their YouTube video. Original story follows below.]
The podium ceremony starts around the 16 minute mark in this YouTube video posted by Sasha Anis from Mountain Pass Performance.
Mountain Pass Performance driver Cameron Rogers was pulled off stage a minute and a half into the ceremony. You can practically hear the searing butt-hurt the driver transferred to the organizers as they tell Rogers that electrons are not an approved fuel. Someone really pitched a fit.
Rogers took his chance on stage to pre-shake the new second-place winners’ champagne and to deliver his message of hope to other Tesla lovers out there. “You can’t fight the future, man!” he said.
In the video, Anis mentions that organizers told him that the person who protested was the one who Rogers and Anis were battling for first place with and that the organizers didn’t foresee anyone exploiting this loop hole. They didn’t foresee it, probably because this was the first time an EV had ever entered the event. Despite the rain on their parade, Rogers and his team still had a great race.
“It’s pretty cool that we’re stirring the pot a little here,” Anis said in the video. “And people are threatened by electric cars. We’re not just puttering around in last place.”