The VW ID R wants another world record

A year after the insane ID R became the first car to run the 12.4-mile, 156-corner Pikes Peak Hillclimb in under eight minutes, VW has announced it’s taking the 670bhp, 1,100kg all-electric, all-wheel drive race car to China.

This coming September Romain Dumas will drive the ID R up the Tianmen Shan Big Gate Road - a 99-corner, 6.8-mile mountain pass used mainly by tourist buses that climbs 1,100m up the side of the 1,519m-high Tianmen Mountain. It’s very narrow, very twisty and very, very dangerous indeed.

Just one thing - there isn’t yet a record for Dumas to beat. Nobody else is brave enough, plainly. Beforehand VW will instead run a competition, where people will use a video game to post virtual times behind the wheel of a virtual ID R. It’s the fastest of these times that Dumas will try and beat when he arrives in China in a few month’s time.

The 41-year old Le Mans-winner says he only “knows the road from photos and a few videos”, and that “the route is very winding, extremely narrow in places, and very uneven”. But so’s the Goodwood hill, and he managed that just fine. The Nurburgring record VW and Dumas are going after first will be good practice...