A Porsche Taycan GTS has set a new Guinness World Record for drifting on ice

Porsche has set another new Guinness World Record. Professional Helmsmith Jens Richter spent 46 minutes looking out of the side windows of a Taycan GTS to complete the ‘longest ever continuous drift on ice by an EV’, chalking up the Taycan’s fourth GWR.

Richter managed to keep it pinned for a whopping 17.503km – that’s 10.87 miles! – beating the previous Very Sideways On Ice Record of 14.8km (by a Merc) and 7.351km (by a Skoda).

So yee, and very much haw. Can imagine that was a fun day out for all… or perhaps not. “Under the extreme continuous load of the drifting Taycan, the ice track deteriorated faster than expected,” said Richter.

Yeesh. Like that bit in a film where the ground metaphorically falls away beneath you, except this literally started to fall away beneath them. “We therefore had to abort the first attempt after around 11km,” added Richter.

For the second, record-breaking run, Porsche switched the Taycan GTS onto shorter spikes and waited for the darkness – the lower temps helped firm the ice right back up, and Richter kept his foot in for 132 laps of the ice track “using only throttle and steering interventions”.

Consider the new Taycan GTS boasts up to 690bhp of total power (during overboost), can shoot from 0-62mph in 3.3s and gets a better rear axle motor and a revised AWD strategy over the previous Taycan, and you see that Richter pretty much had his hands full.

As did the Porsche team responsible for the layout. It took place at Porsche’s Arctic Center in Finland, 150km north of the Arctic Circle. The Porsche ‘Experience’ team carved out a drift circle measuring 59 metres in diameter, bolted some GPS devices into the GTS, and called in an adjudicator from Guinness World Records. And then sent it.

Ah yes, fourth GWR. The Taycan Cross Turismo got the ‘greatest altitude change by an EV’ across the Xinjiang-Tibet route back in 2023. In 2021, Leh Keen took a Taycan to 165.1kmh (102mph) inside a hall in New Orleans for the ‘fastest speed driven by a vehicle in an enclosed building. And before that, Dennis Retera spent 55 minutes looking out the side windows of another Taycan to cover 42.171km at the Porsche Experience Center at the Hockenheimring.

What next, ‘longest ever continuous drift atop an erupting mountain’?