Watch This 1,800bhp VW Lupo Set a 9-Second Quarter Mile Time
You get some brilliant cars at Santa Pod Raceway. It’s Britain’s most popular drag strip and the oldest drag strip in Europe. With this, it welcomes plenty of odd and interesting builds from around the country. This car, while boasting an incredible level of performance, certainly falls under that definition.
This VW Lupo is one hell of an interesting one, with an extended wheelbase and, wait for it, 1,800hp, this drag car has two Golf R engines to fire it down the strip. Because of this setup, it has an extremely complex four-wheel drive system which enables it to grip up quickly.
The team behind the vehicle have reached quarter-mile times of 8.79 seconds in Romania with a lower power version of the build, but with an addition 600hp at Santa Pod, the wasn’t able to break into the 8 seconds. Maybe, too much power can in fact be a bad thing. After all, the driver was forced to tackle the additional torque steer that plagued the quarter mile runs, making it not only more dangerous, but harder to control, with the car violently veering into the other lane on the first run.
It may be worth the team looking at their alignment and suspension setup for the next attempt which surely won’t be too long a wait. Additionally, having a different engine powering each axle can be problematic due to the spread of uneven power. There are plenty of directions the team can go from here, but are maybe limited by the Lupo chassis.
