Video: can a cheetah beat a Formula E car in a drag race?

You can always tell when racecar teams are getting a bit agitated during the off-season. A couple of years ago, the Lotus F1 chaps got so bored, they drove the team truck up a ramp and jumped over a speeding F1 car. Watch it here – it’s still utterly barmy.

So, three years on, and electric single-seater series Formula E wants to up the ante. How best to show off those Formula E cars are not just fast, but relatively kind to our precious, irreplaceable planet? 

Minutes later, we presume, a South African zoo got an unusual phonecall. "Got any cheetahs we can borrow, please?”

Yes, here we are to answer another question of mankind’s derring-do versus billions of years of evolution. Can an electric Formula E car, driven by ex-F1 pilot Jean-Eric Vergne, out-accelerate the fastest land-mammal on the planet? A cheetah, remember, can reach speeds of around 70mph on a flat plain, over short distances. Like the Formula E car, it needs to stop and rest quite soon afterwards. 

We’ll not spoil the result for you here. Watch the video, then let us know which speed machine you’re more impressed by. And your theories for how this was actually shot…