Just under a year ago the Team O’Neil folks set a new lap record of their home course in a new Subaru WRX, a time which was deemed difficult to beat in anything on street-legal tires. This winter it was the team’s goal to find something faster than the WRX around the short course, a goal of beating a 2:14.38 snowy lap. Could something electric be the right move? The team brought in a slightly modified Tesla Model 3 sedan, a dual-motor unit with four-wheel torque vectoring, to see if it could tackle the course. Wouldn’t you know it, the damn thing was over two seconds quicker than the Subaru, and beat a Toyota GR Corolla by 18 seconds!
Running a short course stage rally in slippery conditions is a difficulty that even the best cars struggle with, so what makes this Model 3 so special? Aside from the electric car’s ability to modulate power delivery constantly and instantly to all four wheels, this one has been fitted with a few Mountain Pass goodies to give it a little more rally speed. It has a 1.75-inch lift kit, adjustable upper control arms, a front skid plate, and the “partybox” motor controller to adjust some of the car’s parameters to optimize them for rally.
More than anything, though, it was the tires that made the difference. As with any winter driving, you need winter tires to go, stop, and handle anywhere near the limit. A perfect demonstration of that can be found in the first few seconds of the video where rally instructor Wyatt Knox tried to drive the car on the Falken Wildpeak A/T tires it came with, and it was immediately stuffed into a snowbank. Toss on a set of Nokian Hakkapliitta 10s with a bunch of studs in them, and boom, lap record! Keep that in mind next time you think you can make it through a winter without winter tires.
It goes without saying that Elon sucks and his cars are poorly built at best, but the Model 3 is quick and electric torque vectoring is essentially unbeatable. Tack on the Mountain Pass Performance modifications and a good set of rubber and it was going to be an unbeatable combination.