The Goodwood Festival of Speed has already had one of its first crashes, and it happened before the car even got underway. The Lotus Evija X, the ultra-light, track-only variant of the brand’s electric supercar, hit the hay bales right at the start of its run, part of the car’s first public appearance. According to Senior Editor James Riswick, who’s at the event, the driver is fine following the wreck.
The crash happened Thursday when the Evija X was about to do a run. Once given the go-ahead to take off, the driver launched into a long smoky four-wheel burnout. But towards the end, the car veered off to the right. It ended up smacking into the hay bales and spinning around. The front clip of the car tore off in fairly dramatic fashion, which looked bad, but the car otherwise looked relatively intact, and the wreck wasn’t at especially high speed. And as previously mentioned, the driver was unharmed. You can watch the wreck from multiple angles in the video at top.
In the video, the commentators note that the Evija X features four electric motors, and they speculate that it’s possible one or more of the motors might’ve been tripped up a bit by the burnout. We’d say that’s possible, but even with conventional combustion-powered cars, it’s always possible for something to hook up at a time and in a way that’s unexpected and causes the car to get out of control. And that can happen really quickly on a course as narrow as the Goodwood hill climb.
But it might be a little while before the Evija X starts hunting course records again. It’s based on the production model that produces around 2,000 horsepower from its four electric motors. But it has obviously been modified with significant aerodynamic upgrades in the form a giant rear wing, front splitter and other winglets. It also lacks production lights and has undergone other lightweight modifications. It completed a lap of the Nürburgring Nordschleife in 6:24.047, giving it the third fastest lap time at the circuit.