What's a Tesla race car like to drive?

Early morning at a Spanish racetrack. A low, wide, slick-shod racecar sits in the pits, glinting under the sharp sunlight. Taciturn mechanics hover and swoop around like gulls following a plough, occasionally breaking the silence with the stutter of a torque wrench. A quiet, thin man in Nomex pulls on his helmet, wriggles in and tightens his straps. So far, so very routine.

Then, suddenly, noiselessly, the car has absented itself, and is out on the track. No attention-grabbing exhaust or engine noise, no aurally hostile warm-up procedures. Just here, and then not here. Once it’s out and running, it’s so stealthy as to be beyond audible range for most of a lap, only announcing itself on the nearby corners by a drumming of its tyres on the kerbs, then a jet-like whistle as it whooshes past the pits on the straight.

Photos: John Wycherley

This feature was originally published in issue 292 of Top Gear magazine

Each car will upload a mass of live telemetry to the cloud. This data will be linked to apps, so race followers can see in real time not just lap times and race positions, but their chosen driver’s real-time accelerator and brake inputs, battery energy and temperatures, motor power, whatever. Gemmell is also contemplating putting giant LCD displays on each car, showing some of that data graphically. As for the noise, or absence thereof, Gemmell is recruiting musicians to produce soundtracks for the cars for live remixing in sync with the track action.

Though he lives in Madrid, the Scotland that Gemmell departed two decades ago remains in his accent. But his vocabulary crackles like static electricity with the terminology of the digital age: connectivity driving interaction, engagement and empowerment. He’s designing protocols so fans, while watching all the in-car data, can send likes or upvotes to a driver which will appear live on that Tesla’s central screen as a heatmap. When drivers have a moment, they can swipe the screen to pulse the love back to the fans – “closing the engagement loop”, as Gemmell puts it. Because the fans will be logged in, right there you have invaluable user data to be harvested by sponsors.

I open the flimsy, lightened door to a cabin that’s stripped bare to all its sheet aluminium extrusions, bolt holes and flanges. About the only recognisable production bits are the big and bigger display screens. Race seat, steering wheel, cage, extinguisher and harnesses complete the interior decor. Plugging this particular nervous and unpractised human component into the machine isn’t a quick business, but eventually I’m strapped in.

Long-press a yellow button on the steering wheel, while moving the stalk (the transmission stalk out of a Mercedes) to D. That’s it. Deep breath. Focus. Silence prevails. Fire away. And I really am fired away, out of the pits and from the early, tight corners. It’s that famous Tesla instant torque – just add electrons. It’ll spin the rear slicks when they’re cold.

Here’s someone who will. Karun Chandhok drove in Formula One for Lotus, and GT3 and Le Mans in LMP1 and LMP2, and did a Formula E season too. He’s here to try the car and give some feedback. He thinks the motor might be overheating, because power drops after the first lap. And he’s boiled the brakes. But he, too, is impressed with the corner-entry speed and absence of understeer. “It’ll be nice with twice the power.” Fair point: the race-series cars will be based on the Model S P100D, which has a motor in the front too, and a longer-range battery pack that can deliver more power and accept more on regeneration.

Chandhok elaborates on why electric racing demands a whole lot more than the traditional racer’s skill set. Drivers use all the power out of corners, but then take straights at a speed carefully pegged for efficiency. Pre-braking techniques get the most possible regeneration. And all the time they’re nursing battery and motor temperatures. “Thermal management will always be an issue with batteries. It’s like having asthma – you know when you have to use your inhaler. You manage it. Same with battery heat.” All of which means e-racing is “much more cerebral”. The teams will need engineers who are on top of this stuff. Such people aren’t exactly thick on the ground.

At the moment there is little tangible validation for Electric GT’s proposition – all the talk is of “strong interest” from teams and sponsors. But, significantly, a roster of top-end circuits have said they’ll take the races, among them Paul Ricard, the ’Ring, Estoril and Barcelona. Italian and British tracks were poised as I spoke to Gemmell. The plan is for each event to include practice, a 60-minute qualifying session and two races (daylight and dusk).

Surrounding it all, “a weekend festival of innovation for sustainability”. Hardly your usual motorsport weekend of decadent resource destruction. Electric GT rests entirely on its being able to find new sponsors who want its new means of connecting with fans. And most of all, new fans.