If there’s one rule of the Goodwood Festival of Speed’s hillclimb, it’s don’t crash. Occasionally, the 1.16-mile run through the Duke of Richmond’s driveway will claim a victim – but usually, it’s through some of the course’s surprisingly gruelling corners, particularly Molcombe. Rarely, though, does it claim a car from the start line.
That’s near enough what happened yesterday though when Lotus attempted to send its 1972bhp Evija X for a run yesterday. As seen in the now-viral clip, the electric hypercar makes a rather dramatic smoke-filled start before very quickly spearing off into a haybale on the right-hand start.
It wasn’t too long before the damage became clear either, with the whole front end of the car ripped off in a matter of seconds. That’d be unfortunate in any case, but this is an effectively priceless one-off machine. Yikes.
We asked Lotus if it knew the cause of the crash, and a press representative told us the following:
“Evija X is a one-off track version of our electric hypercar, Evija; one of the most powerful production cars in the world. The Evija X took part in a hill run at Goodwood Festival of Speed on Thursday, 11 July, where it was involved in an incident at the start line.
“Following a formal evaluation by both Goodwood and Lotus, asymmetric grip caused by overcorrection during rapid acceleration at the start line was determined to be the cause. [The] Driver was unharmed in the incident and there was minimal damage to the car.”
The Evija X was set for the final shootout on Sunday
Sadly, this will likely spell the end of the Evija X’s appearances at the Festival of Speed this year, unless there’s magically a new front-end worth of spares stashed somewhere. It was slated to compete in Sunday’s famed timed final shootout and with a very real chance of being the fastest thing up the hill this weekend.
For now, its main achievement will sit as an impressive 6:24.047 around the Nurburgring, being the third-fastest thing ever to lap the Nordschleife. Only the Volkswagen ID.R Pikes Peak Special and no-limits Porsche 919 Evo have managed a faster time, just to give more context to that.
