I was supposed to be at Goodwood, but had to return early for medical reasons of the stupid variety. I’m basically fine now and everything is okay, and even though my Goodwood experience was cut off before it began, frustratingly, I’m still pretty sure I’m having a better Goodwood experience than whoever was driving Lotus’ $2.3 million all-electric Lotus Evija X hypercar and crashed it almost immediately off the start line at the Goodwood Hill Climb, like a Charger losing control exiting a Dayton-area Cars & Coffee. Ugh.
The Evija X is no joke, with about 2,000 horsepower from four motors, one powering each wheel via, shockingly, a standard bicycle chain (just kidding, that bit about the bike chain is very much Not True). It’s a track-only car, and just recently set the Nürburgring’s third-fastest lap time of 6:24, after the Volkswagen ID.R (6:05) and the Porsche 919 Evo (5:19). Lotus likes to remind us that the Evija X has a production-car chassis, which would make it the fastest lap time for something based on a production car.
All of this is just to say that the car is an absolute beast, and the very fact that it can ever be wrestled into going in the direction a frail, juicy human wants it to go is nothing short of incredible.
Yesterday, though, that didn’t really happen. This is what happened:
Lotus instantly crashed their $2.3 million Evija X Prototype at the start line during the Goodwood Festival Of Speed
EV torque for you ???? pic.twitter.com/k0CQtVkfvQ
— Nic Cruz Patane (@niccruzpatane) July 11, 2024
Oh crap. Right at the start line! Oh, I can feel the pain there! It looks like everything went wrong pretty much immediately, with tons of tire smoke suggesting none of those wheels were getting any sort of grip at all, until maybe one did, just enough to launch the car into the haybales.
Here’s another view of the incredibly short lap:
Now the good news is that this really doesn’t seem to be the fault of the driver, but more of a software issue, where the motor control software was not able to keep up with the intense, multi-wheel burnout. This seems to be at least partially confirmed by a statement from Lotus given to Road and Track:
“The Evija X took part in a hill run at Goodwood Festival of Speed on Thursday, 11th July, where it was involved in an incident at the start line. Following a formal evaluation by both Goodwood and Lotus, asymmetric grip caused by overcorrection during rapid acceleration at the start line was determined to be the cause. Driver was unharmed in the incident and there was minimal damage to the car.”
Hmm, okay, maybe not that confirmed. Lotus seems to be blaming an “overcorrection” which I guess lays this at the poor driver’s feet. Though, really, I suspect that both human and machine had at least roughly equal roles in this fiasco.
I can’t help but wonder what I’d be thinking were it me in that remarkable and wild Lotus, my mind still reeling from the clash of the initial pre-start adrenalin and self-pep-talking and the near-immediate reality that I’d just pranged the car horribly into a big cube of hay. What would I do, confronted with such a rapid and colossal fuck-up, my fault or otherwise? He’re a few ideas that popped into my sympathetically-panicked mind:
1. Hide
Yes, hide. Take advantage of all that smoke, get that five-point harness off and try to cram myself behind the seat or something like that. When they open up the car, and they don’t see me there, maybe they’ll just assume they forgot to put me in there in the first place? Seems worth a try.
2. I Meant To Do That
This is a classic, and either never fails or never works; I can’t quite recall which one here, but I’m just about positive it’s one of these results. Confidence is key here, and a certain feigned confusion that you really have to sell: “I’m sorry, isn’t that what we wanted to do? A quick hay bale crash test, right at the start? That’s what we said, right? And it went great! Why’s everyone acting so weird?”
Even better, I could have a specific thing in mind I was “testing,” like I come out saying “hay bale attraction system test is a complete success! The system works! It works, people, it works!”
3. Play Dead
Look, it works for possums, it should work for racing drivers, too. Just go limp and when they toss me onto the pile of stuff they need to deal with later, I wait for darkness and sneak away to start a new life under an assumed name, maybe something like Tony deLaser or Randy Bumblenuts.
4. Get Out of Car While the Air Is Still Full of Smoke, Mix Into Crowd, Act As Surprised As Anyone
The key here is to ditch the helmet, and get in a position where you can be seen looking at all the carnage nice and confused, saying things like “wow” and “holy shit” and “I hope everyone is okay!” [Ed note: Like so!]
5. Pretend Like A Portal Opened And I’m From A Parallel Universe
This one requires that a critical mass of people around me subscribe to some sort of quantum multiverse theory, but thanks to the popularity this concept has had in mass media and entertainment, I bet that should be a reasonably safe bet. I’ll just claim that the incredible power created by the Evija X under full acceleration was enough to open a rift in the fabric of spacetime, and it swapped me, Torch from an alternate universe where Lotus was the largest, most successful carmaker but Goodwood happens in, um, Lansing, Michigan, for the Torch that was supposed to be driving this car, and, well, everything went to shit from there. This one requires making up a lot of flattering lies about alternate-universe Lotus to answer questions I’ll invariably get asked, but I think I can do that.
Also, in the universe I say I came from, Hanomag is still a major player in the automotive space, and they now own the rights to the Mustang.
6. Just Pee In the Seat, Generously and, Yes, Lavishly
I mean, I may as well, everything else has gone absolutely to hell as it is, right? No reason not to just really let go and absolutely flood that crumpled interior with my redolent post-fuck-up-pee.
7. Come Out Blaming Someone Specific
For this to work, I think I’d need a very specific scapegoat. Ideally, someone who has it coming, but if not, maybe some summer intern with rich parents who’ll land on his feet no matter what? I’d have to come out screaming the name of my targeted chump, and ideally have some sort of vague explanation about what happened. Something like “Dammit, Kyle, what did I tell you about messing with the throttle return spring!” or “What the fuck, Cassie, you spilled kombucha all over the pedals?” Something like that.
8. Feign Amnesia
Yep, just like getting hit on the head with a cartoon mallet. Open that door, loudly ask “where am I?” and then just play dumb until all the shit blows over! Easy!
9. Blame It On The Car Being Too Woke/Too MAGA
The key here is being able to read the crowd; which one will get me more sympathy? This may be tricky to pull off in the heat of the moment, so it may just come down to a gut-level crapshoot. Either way, I’m going to have about half the crowd against me and half willing to defend me, without the burden of evidence, which is what I’ll need.
10. Ask For A Do-Over
The trick here is to immediately exit the car screaming “Hold up, hold up, that didn’t count, I get a do-over” and then desperately try and shove the wrecked car back into place, likely ineffectually, until security drags me off, screaming and sobbing. The key here is I kept my dignity.
For some reason the old joke about “what’s the last thing to go through a fly’s mind when it hits a windshield” popped into my head as soon as I saw your headline.
I left mildly disappointed that “my butt” was not listed in the things that would go through your mind when wrecking a 2000HP car.
Great article, though, and likely better for leaving out that part!
Jump out screaming about “Unintended Acceleration” and “You’re going to hear from my lawyer!!”
Downforce! What the hell happened to all my downforce? Who do I gotta talk to around here?
This is a hilarious angle on this crash. One I wasn’t expecting. Might be the greatest article you have ever written. Bravo!!!!
Best launch coverage I’ve ever read.
We’re trying to find the guy who did this! – is the correct answer.
I’d have got out after the crash with a white cane and started tapping it on the asphalt while bumping into things and apologizing for my blindness.
L-ots O-f T-rouble, U-sually S-erious
This is exactly the kind of hard-hitting automotive journalism I expect when I come to a site as prestigious as The Autopian. Keep it up, Torch!
11. Pretend to be Sam Beckett. “Oh boy!”
I thought this is where Torch was leading with idea #5.
With Sam Beckett (& Ben Song) it was about time travel rather than parallel universes. Miles Morales and his various counterparts in the Spider-Verse would be more like #5.
This was so hilarious!!!
They added too much lightness to the floormats.
“Good tires” Bob mused…well..you know the rest
Exotic hypercar completely destroyed………..by hitting a couple hay bales.
Blame Dan Marino… jump from the vehicle and scream “Laces out, Marino…!”
Props to Lotus for some very effective Mustanging. That might be some kind of record for 0-Smashed here!
Nobody was hurt. Doesn’t count.
Option 6.5: claim your aorta is unzipping again.
Obviously they shouldn’t have let Richard Hammond drive it.
I mean, it was my first thought…
One does not have to wreck a Lotus to change their name to Randy Bumblenuts, I say you go for it!!!
Jump out of the car, climb on the roof and celebrate like you’ve just won.
Just start spraying that podium champagne and roll with it…
I’ve come to realize that to be a successful racing driver you need to give zero f—s about damage or ruining another drivers race.
So the answer is to say nothing.
Stay in the car until everyone else leaves
Alternate option, if that’s not possible, get out of car with helmet on and run to closest storage closet, remain in there until everyone else leaves, even if it takes the entire day.
Hey guys,
It was my car that was involved and a mistake was made. There were no intentions of doing anything out of the norm. In fact, you’ll notice in the video that the car was going very slowly in front of the crowd. This was intentional because we’ve all watched too many YouTube videos of this sort of thing happening and wanted to make sure that nobody would get hurt should anything unexpected happen. Once the car was past the crowd the accelerator was pushed in a straight-line as I have done many times in the past when the rear snapped violently. The car was going ~30mph at that time. The car has been driven for 4700 miles and has been driven with DSC off many times including in the rain and never has the car snapped so violently just from accelerating. I chalk it up to several factors including cold temps (low 40s), cold tires and incorrect psi (more on that later) and of course driver error. More judicious use of the throttle should have been exercised. MDM mode was not used because MDM is too quick to intervene and cuts power prematurely (or maybe not).
Usually when the rear breaks loose, it does so progressively and steering correction will suffice. However, you can see in the video that the front tires are turned slightly to the right indicating opposite lock was put on the steering trying to prevent the car from doing a complete 180 however there wasn’t enough real estate to counter how violently it snapped – though admittedty the gravity of the snap required immediate full oppo lock which was misread. I’m not sure why some are saying that no steering input was made because it was – one could argue it should have been sooner but again usually a little wiggle just takes small steering input and power through not a full-on immediate opposite lock as was needed in such a big snap – to me it actually seemed like it was happening in slow-mo although the vid makes it seem like it happened so fast. As the car started to correct it became apparent that there was no way out except over the curb which is where I put on the brakes and tried to straightline the curb as much as possible to avoid hitting the curb at an angle which would cause a lot of damage and potentiality flip/roll the car.
I’ve driven many high hp rwd cars including vipers, porsches, corvettes, and formula cars and I’ve graduated from formula racing schools and have years of training in advanced car control and plenty of track time. Heck I remember day one of Formula school, half of the first day was spent on the skid pad learning how to keep a car from spinning if you lose traction. Maybe I need a refresher since it’s been awhile and I’ve been driving AWD Audis for the past few years. Some of those other RWD cars I mentioned will snap fiercely and you have to be on extremely high alert, however my experience with the M4 has been that it tends to not snap so viciously in a straight line – but this time I was wrong. I would caution anyone thinking that it can’t happen to them (count me as previously one of those) that anyone can make a mistake. I’m thankful that nobody was injured from such a mistake. Surprisingly, the car seems to be driving just fine with the only damage being the right plastic guard underneath the bumper which can be seen in the video. Surprising I know.
I mentioned earlier that I had incorrect PSI – let me explain. My PSI was low, so I inflated it a bit with a pump with an analog tire guage which of course is very imprecise compared to a digital gauge. I noticed that my right tire pressure was 1.5psi off of my left when viewing the PSI from the BMW onboard digital gauge (you can only do this while driving). However, as my car had been pulling to the right from day 1 of delivery (there’s a big thread of many complaining about that on these forums). Miraculously, the car drifted to the right to a lesser extent with the right tire PSI being slightly higher than the left and so I was playing around with the idea of keeping it that way for a short time- however I knew that I needed to put the PSI equally across both tires but I just failed to do that before going to the meet. I have no idea if unequal PSI left to right contributed to the right rear spinning so differently than the left.
Anyways, I know I’ll be ridiculed and called an idiot (and rightfully so) but I think many of you also know that I didn’t do anything intentionally out of the ordinary or unsafe. I’m not sure I was even trying to show off as acceleration happened when the car was past the crowd and it’s not like a powerslide or burnout or anything of that sort occurred.
I also think the M4 is a fine car and I have no complaints about the amount of power or torque or tire width or grip or anything. In fact, the whole reason I got the M4 is because it’s not AWD and I like the rear moving around a bit. Mistakes happen and I’ve learned a lesson – and from now on will keep DSC on when driving around because there’s too much at stake to make a mistake while driving – no matter how good or bad of a driver you are. Thanks for hearing me out. It certainly has been a humbling experience.
Well played Justin.
This was an informative summary of your experience. Thank you.
Let he who hasn’t nailed an accelerator cast the first helmet.
Comment Of The Year!
Perfect callback. Nicely done!
Comment of the Decade (r)
That’s what happens when you add lightness unevenly.
Gotta blame an inanimate object, but not the car. It’s the right thing to do.
I’d go with the classic Footloose excuse.
Get out, angrily remove my shoes, throw them and exclaim loudly “god damn shoe laces!”
Then walk away shaking my head like none of this was my fault and I’m disgusted by all of it.
Blame successfully transferred.