Speed Week drag race: BMW i8 vs Range Rover Sport SVR

An unlikely pairing, isn’t it? One’s an electrically augmented, carbon-shelled hybrid with big flappy doors and the 1.5-litre three-cylinder motor from a Mini. The other's a two-and-a-bit tonne supercharged V8 SUV with quad tailpipes, 22-inch alloys and an insatiable thirst for premium unleaded.

So what happens when you stick one up against the other in a drag race? Well, that’s exactly what we did at our annual Speed Week test, where the BMW i8 and Range Rover Sport SVR were joined by 17 other very excellent machines at the Red Bull Ring in Austria for a few days of general speed-based merriment. 

Let's take a quick look at the numbers. The i8 may be almost 200bhp down on the SVR - with just 357bhp to the SVR's 542bhp - but it’s a massive 845kg lighter. The official 0-62mph times are just 0.1 of a second apart - the i8's 4.4-second sprint playing the Rangie's 4.5. But how about on TG's drag strip? This should be close...