Have we talked about the McMurtry EV sucker fan racer?

I was just watching Goodwood and was struck by this beast.

Ev racer with fans

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British firm McMurty Automotive debuted a radical electric track car at the 2021 Goodwood Festival of Speed this week. Called the Spéirling, it combines massive downforce with minimal drag and curb weight.

McMurtry describes the Spéirling as an experimental vehicle, designed to show the path that "uninhibited technical evolution would have taken from the golden age of racing to shape the motorsport of today." In other words, the Spéirling doesn't conform to the rules of any current racing series, nor is it street legal. It's essentially a modern version of a Can-Am race car.

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The Spéirling's main engineering innovation is an electric fan and underbody skirt, capable of generating up to 1,102 pounds of downforce regardless of speed, according to Autocar. It's similar in concept to the rear-mounted fan on Gordon Murray's Brabham BT46B Formula One car, which is reproduced on the designer's T.50 supercar.

Using the underbody to generate downforce means less need for spoilers and other drag-generating aerodynamic aids, allowing McMurtry to keep the Batmobile-esque carbon-fiber bodywork as sleek as possible.

McMurtry Speirling

McMurtry said the rear-wheel drive Spéirling has a power-to-weight ratio of 1 hp per kg, though the company only shared that the car weighs less than 1 metric ton (1.1 standard tons). The company also said the Spéirling will do 0-186 mph in less than 9.0 seconds, with a top speed of more than 200 mph.

A 60-kwh battery pack will provide 30-60 minutes of track driving per charge, equivalent to a 350-mile range on the European WLTP testing cycle, according to McMurtry.

It's unclear what other plans McMurtry has for the Spéirling. Following Goodwood, McMurtry aims to break a series of world records, according to a statement on its website, but there's no indication of what those records might be.

For more 2021 Goodwood Festival of Speed coverage, head over to our dedicated hub.

HIGH-RES GALLERY: McMurtry Speirling

TAGS:

Electric Cars Goodwood Festival of Speed NewsTrack Cars

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That's amazing

YouTube clip of it

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=azOMEY9Z8sg

Just saw this on TopGear's youtube. 

Looks rad. I've always loved the idea of a car that's more like a motorcycle in size and intent. Performance focused, fun, not really practical, cheap. 

I have a feeling the McMurtry won't be cheap, but electric vehicles (without all kinds of gizmos) are significantly less expensive to produce. Without all the gizmos, stuff like this could really come down in price. 

Not really a fair comparison, but in roughly the same time my old EG Civic Si got to 65mph it's going 186mph.  Wild.

Update: The car just went up Goodwood and was ID.R-level quick

That's an incredible bit of kit.  I don't find it terribly attractive but wow that's impressive.

What is interesting to me is that, since the downforce is electric and not strictly aerodynamic, you can turn it off when not needed.

Some F1 cars would decelerate at 2G just by letting off the throttle at 180mph, from all the aero drag.  That means that the power it took just to maintain that speed could accelerate it about that hard if that drag were not there.

It's impressive, but it's not C4 Vette impressive. 

That looks like the hero car from a poorly animated, 3d children's show.

I saw the run, it looked like the video had been speeded up.  Amazing.

To me it looks like a Tooned Batmobile.  Seeing all of the debris being blown out behind was impressive.   

That Goodwood clip was impressive.. That little thing is *stupid* fast. 

And they just annihilated the ID.R record by nearly a second. That thing is absolutely bonkers. They took the full AMod approach to the hill with minimum width, max downforce and squirrelbag power and it paid off.

I got lucky and put on MT tv at just the right time to see the last of the fastest go up the hill. That thing is sick. And the sound it makes. Yikes, get out da way!

He was not done:

That seriously looks like sped up video. 

At some point we are going to exceed a speed that the track can be run safely (I am referring to the safety of the spectators).  I think we may have found it.  

I'm not quite sure what a car like that could be used for, other than hill climbs and autocross.  Fan cars are a real detriment to the cars following them.

I'm just hypothesizing here, but it sounds like the fan takes some time to spool up before launch, leading me to believe the fan itself is fairly heavy. On one hand this is kind of clever, because is gives the fan itself a lot of flywheel inertia, and means that a failure of the fan drive system at speed doesn't result in all your downforce disappearing at once. 

I wonder if they also use the inertia from the fan to feed power back into the car at certain points? Or at least stop drawing power when th car is in certain situations where body aero is providing enough downforce.

At any rate, it's cool AF, and it's cool to see how far we've come with sucker cars since the early Chapparal experiments.

I wanna see what it can do at Monaco. Guesses on how much time it takes outta the F1 cars *just* on the hairpin? Those boys ain't got no downforce there but this thing sure does...

The profile is pure Batmobile. Love it.

Although check this quote from McMurty's managing director:

The last time a fan car competed in motorsport was when Niki Lauda dominated the 1978 Swedish Formula One Grand Prix....

We all know how wrong he is.

The fan can't be that heavy. The car comes in at 2000 lbs, of which probably 800 lbs are batteries (60 kw). Truly a fascinating bit of kit. The narrow track width is another interesting detail. I suppose made possible by the fan and a really low cg.

Not to be alarmist, but I've often throught that event is one blown tire away from a really bad accident. Those hay bails on the run through the rock wall chicane are a bit terrifying. 

It was indeed amazing. Count me as one of the people who like the Batmobile look of it.