What do you do when you want to film some of the fastest cars in the world drag racing each other up close? You need another car for this, ideally even faster and so quiet that it doesn’t drown out the spectacular engine noise of the actual participants. As early as late 2020, Chinese producers came up with the idea of using an electric car for this, and when filming from the Nio EP9 they were able to overtake Lamborghini Aventador and Koenigsegg Agera R. A group from the USA, meanwhile, is now using a Tesla Model S Plaid as such a camera car – and pitted it against a Bugatti Chiron before a series of exotic sports car comparisons.
Camera Tesla beats super burners
The location for this is a drag race track near the city of Columbus in the US state of Ohio. The group The Triple F Collection regularly produces videos with their members’ supercars and hypercars and had the approximately one-kilometer-long track specially laid out, explains as their guest Brooks Weisblat, a well-known YouTuber, but this time he is not planning to use his own Tesla place is. Instead, the strikingly foiled Model S Plaid is used, which is otherwise used by Triple F for filming.
The price of his opponent Bugatti Chiron is estimated at $ 3.6 million in a video by Weisblat of the meeting. For this you get an engine with 16 cylinders and four turbochargers for 1500 hp with a moderate weight of just under 2000 kilograms. The Plaid Tesla costs less than a twentieth, has less power with 1020 hp and weighs almost 2200 kilograms more. But he puts his power better on the road, because in four out of five duels with the Bugatti he is ahead by a nose.
The owner of the Bugatti says that he has never made a direct comparison from standing between the Chiron and the Model S Plaid on a special track, so he could only guess beforehand how the duels would turn out. When you first start from a standing start, both drive off pretty much at the same time and the Tesla almost immediately gets a decent lead that the roaring combustion engine with the many cylinders can no longer catch up. The second time around, Weisblat was polite at the wheel of the Model S Plaid and let the competitor get away with a late start and a premature start, which gave the Bugatti its only point. In the third starting duel without a lead, the Plaid electric car is faster again.
Soon trial with Bugatti Chiron Super Sport
The almost truck-sized Bugatti engine is brutally loud, but even with a rolling start from 40 miles per hour, the package is not enough to catch up with the quiet Tesla to the braking point. In the second of these comparisons, Weisblat held back a bit with the power pedal, as he later said, and the Chiron came almost level, but not past it. The car is almost cheating, says the Bugatti owner afterwards about the Plaid Tesla – not the most exciting, but at $150,000 with almost nothing to match. He still wants to try again soon, because according to him, Triple F will soon get a Chiron in the Super Sport version with another 100 combustion horsepower more.
