Oops: Lotus Crashed Its One-Off Track Car Right at Goodwood's Starting Line (UPDATE)

Lotus's record-breaking Evija track car didn't even make it to the first turn before shunting into the hay bale barrier.

Photo by: YouTube

By: Brian Silvestro

Jul 11, 2024 at 2:20pm ET

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The 2024 Goodwood Festival of Speed has claimed its first victim. The Lotus Evija X—a one-off track special built to break a very specific Nurburgring record—crashed during Thursday's events at Goodwood, destroying its front end. Thankfully the driver walked away from the incident.

While it's not uncommon to see high-horsepower cars crash into the hay bales at Goodwood, this incident is still peculiar. It didn't occur at Molecomb corner, a tricky left-hander mid-way through the course famous for catching even pro drivers. Instead, it happened right at the start line.

Footage of the crash shows the Evija X doing an absolutely gigantic burnout, before suddenly snapping right and into the hay bales. The front clamshell was crushed in, but the driver cell seemed to stay intact. The announcers suspect software associated with the car's four individual motors and nearly 2,000-hp output had something to do with the driver losing control. But there's no way to tell for sure until Lotus confirms.

Hopefully all this car will need to get back on the hill is a new front-end piece. Considering The Evija X is a one-off project, though, Lotus might have to make a new one, provided they don't have any extras lying around. Still, in the grand scheme of things, this doesn't look like a terribly costly wreck.

Before this incident at Goodwood, the Evija X set the record for being the fastest vehicle around the Nordschleife with the chassis of a production car, with a lap time of 6 minutes 24 seconds. That makes it the third fastest car to ever lap the fabled race track, behind only the Porsche 919 Hybrid Evo and the Volkswagen ID.R.

Update 7/13/24 - Lotus provided the following statement:

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Evija X is a one-off track version of our electric hyper-car, Evija; one of the most powerful production cars in the world. 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.