We timed the Koenigsegg Jesko Attack to 200mph: how do the SF90 and 911 Turbo S compare?

The Koenigsegg Jesko Attack is now the fastest ever production car to lap Dunsfold in Stig’s gauntleted hands. 1m 10.9s. Yeesh. Fastest road legal car around a track and of course fastest in a straight line, given the records set by the low drag Jesko Absolut a few months back.

Now, a little bitty bonus for you. We extracted the max from our Dunsfold day with the Jesko and managed to dive into how fast the Jesko Attack is in a straight line.

First things first. I was very pushed for time, so could literally only do one run in each direction. With a bit more time and practice the Attack would have got off the line more cleanly and probably snuck below the 3.0s barrier to 60mph. It’s not going to do much better than that for reasons of physics and traction.

Anyway, the small numbers aren’t the ones I want to focus on because the Jesko is wheel-spinning all the way to 100mph. Seriously, when we went back and looked at the tarmac there were black lines painted way, way up the runway. Not solid, more like morse code where the traction control had kept nibbling.

There’s a full table of acceleration further down, comparing Jesko with two cars: the Ferrari SF90 and Porsche 911 Turbo S. Think of this as three levels of performance: sports car, supercar, hypercar, or 650bhp, 1,000bhp and 1,500bhp (the Jesko was fully fuelled with E85).

Both the Ferrari and Porsche are 4WD, so they scorch off the line way faster. The lighter Porsche actually gets its nose in front and holds the advantage to 40mph, getting there in just 1.57secs. A second and a half to 40mph. Jeez. At which point it becomes the SF90’s turn to shine. According to the figures it’s faster than the Koenigsegg all the way to 120mph (both getting there in about 6.4secs), but actually once above 70mph the Jesko starts to claw back time, getting through each 10mph increment faster than the Ferrari. And as the speeds rise those gaps become bigger and bigger and bigger.

The Turbo S takes 11.07s to go from 50-150mph, the SF90 sneaks in just under 8s, but the Jesko does it in 5.66secs. That’s almost exactly twice as fast as the Porsche – one of the very fastest accelerating cars most of us are ever likely to come across. Look at it another way: name me another car that can do 0-100mph as rapidly as the ‘Segg does 50-150? The list is very small, made up of cars such as the Ferrari 296 GTB and McLaren 750S. Think of the extra air that has to be batted out of the way, the fact the Jesko Attack is pulling a huge wing through the air.

That doesn’t seem to hold it back unduly. It scorches from 100-200mph in 8.16secs – a time that would credit cars such as the BMW M4 or a regular Porsche 911.

Let’s back off the big numbers a bit and focus on distance: the ¼ mile. Here it split the Ferrari and Porsche on time, but even given a better start it would be hard pushed to do a 9.7sec quarter on Dunsfold’s surface. But just look at its speed through the trap! After only 400m it was doing 170mph – 20mph faster than the Ferrari. Just for interest, it did the ½ mile in 14.81secs at 209.1mph.

It’s an amazing feeling to drive the Jesko, because up to 100mph you feel the traction chipping in, so the acceleration comes in staggers and gasps. Above that it’s like you’ve let the handbrake off. It just sears forward in a way that no supercar and precious few other cars of any type can come close to matching. Obviously the one that can is the McMurtry Spéirling – 50-150mph in that took just 4.35secs. Bye, bye Koenigsegg.

Yes, I appreciate there is precisely zero real world relevance to a car that only really gets going once into three figures. But that’s a hypercar for you. Relevance is not their thing.

Anyway, go and have a dig into the table. See what you can find.