It’s the best weekend of the year! No, it’s not the weekend I’ve got tickets to see Taylor Swift, it’s Le Mans! This means that the brightest and best from motorsport are in France to fight it out for 24 hours of ridiculously high-octane racing. Are you excited? In the buildup to this year’s race, the rich folks over at Hagarty have put together a little race to show off just how fast a real Le Mans racer is.
The race is one of the insurance company’s classic drag races, and pitches a Cadillac V-Series.R Le Mans racer against some of the fastest supercars out there, including the Ferrari 296, McLaren 750S and a Porsche 911 Turbo S.
Each of the road-legal cars featured kicks out more than 600 horsepower, can hit 60 mph in no time at all and packs in the kind of luxury trimmings you’d want from a six-figure car. The Caddy, on the other hand, packs a complex hybrid powertrain, a rugged, but functional, cockpit and has the capability to keep running for mile after mile in the 24 Hours of Le Mans… hopefully.
To see how that race-ready pedigree stacks up against the best road cars out there, Hagarty pitched them head to head. The duel started off by seeing which of the road cars was fastest, with the Porsche, McLaren and Ferrari competing in a quarter mile drag race for bragging rights. It was the Ferrari 296 that came out on top, which meant it was selected as the champion road car to take the fight to Cadillac.
First, Hagarty recreated the same quarter-mile drag race between the Ferrari and the Cadillac and, rather surprisingly, the Ferrari came out on top. It completed the sprint in 10 seconds flat, making it only a hair slower than the Lucid Air Dream Edition that made the run in 9.9 seconds thanks to the bonkers acceleration you get in an EV. The Caddy, however, finished the quarter mile in 10.3 seconds.
At the finish line, though, Hagarty recorded the Le mans racer at more than 160 mph, which the team says is the fastest speed its ever recorded in a quarter mile run. Clearly, the Caddy still has more to prove, much more.
So Hagarty set up a second race, one that better reflects the kind of acceleration that a Le Mans racer is built for. This time, the cars start from a steady 37 miles per hour, which is equivalent to the 60kmh limit that’s put on race cars when they’re trundling out of pit lane. This time, the odds are firmly stacked in the Cadillac’s favor.
As the two cars pass their marks, the race car is gone. It shoots down the track thanks to its roaring V8 motor and that extra hybrid power, which means it crosses the line well clever of the Ferrari.
It’s an impressive sight to witness unfold (as you can see for yourself in the video above). It just goes to show just what serious race cars are capable of, but also is testament to how far road cars have come in recent years. Thanks to the tech companies like Ferrari are borrowing from their race teams, it might not be too long before road can fight racers in even more settings.