Formula E: the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT Safety Car is faster than the cars behind it…

From the Berlin round on May 11-12, 2024, Formula E will feature a Safety Car from Porsche boasting over 1000 horsepower.

It is rare to see a Safety Car outperforming the racing cars competing for victory behind it. This is the irony of the history of Formula E, the world championship for electric single-seaters, which are not at the forefront of technology at all.

The Formula E serves as a marketing showcase, and Porsche is right to use this platform to promote its latest products. The new Taycan Turbo GT claims to benefit from learnings derived from the competition (where the German manufacturer is successfully involved), but one might rightly wonder if it’s not the other way around. That is to say, the competition learning from the industry and its billions of euros in investment.

A thick fog surrounds the performance of the Formula E, as onboard videos are never breathtaking in terms of acceleration or cornering speeds. Sure, the tires are not slicks but grooved, yet this is also the case for a road supercar like the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT.

To fuel this skepticism towards the Formula E, a heavily modified version of the Gen 3, called GenBeta boosted to 400 kW (536 hp) with four active drive wheels, only reached a top speed of 218.71 km/h on the London circuit in 2023. In contrast, the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT, despite its 2.3 tons with a driver, accelerates from 0 to 200 km/h in just 6.4 seconds. With minimal speed at the exit of a turn, it could have achieved this figure in half the time.

What would have happened with the “simple” non-overclocked racing version?

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