McMurtry, the British start-up electric vehicle manufacturer, will attempt to break the outright hill climb record at this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed with its new car, the Spéirling. It marked the first time a fan car had competed in motorsport since Niki Lauda won the 1978 Swedish Grand Prix in a Brabham BT46B.

McMurtry presented the Spéirling at the 2021 Goodwood Festival of Speed, but it was a static display. The company has been developing the car over the past 12 months to be able to compete in the event – and the brand hopes it will kick-start its career in the high-performance electric vehicle segment.

Fan cart? Attempting to set a hill climbing record? You need to tell me what I’m looking at here

McMurtry Spéirling was a luxurious single-seater racer with a downforce fan similar to Gordon Murray’s revolutionary Brabham BT46B Formula 1 racer. It’s powered by a pair of electric motors mounted on the rear axle and built around a lightweight carbon fiber monocoque.

Performance specifications beggar belief. The Spéirling’s electric powertrain produces more than 1,000 horsepower, which McMurtry says is enough to propel the car from 0–60 mph in less than 1.5 seconds. Top speed is limited to 150 mph – but that’s due to the close-ratio hill-climbing gearbox.

McMurtry also said the racer’s fan can create 2,000kg of downforce when the car is stationary. That’s twice the spéirling’s nimble 1,000kg weight – and it means that, in theory at least, it could attach itself to your living room ceiling simply by attaching a fan.

At 150 mph, the Spéirling generates more downforce than a Formula 1 racer with help from the front splitter and rear spoiler. However, because most of the downforce is generated by the fan and not by aerodynamic components, McMurtry claims the Spéirling has a very low drag coefficient.

It is powered by a 60kWh battery pack, which is similar in size to that of the Kia e-Niro. McMurtry says enough energy can be stored for about 30 minutes of driving on flat roads. Like the Porsche Taycan and Kia EV6, it runs on an 800V electrical system.

Other technical highlights include active ride height suspension and huge carbon ceramic brakes with six-piston monobloc calipers. Oh, and did we mention the Spéirling is designed and built in England?

What is Speirling fighting against?

Some of the competitors are talented, but McMurtry seems confident about the car’s abilities. The current Goodwood hill climb record holder is Volkswagen ID.R, with a time of 39.9 seconds under Romain Dumas in 2019. Previously, the record holder was Formula 1 driver McLaren MP4/13.

To get the best car on the big day, McMurtry enlisted the help of former Formula 1 driver Max Chilton and British Hillclimb Championship leader Alex Summers. Chilton (who is also the project’s lead development driver) will have the most time behind the wheel, piloting the Spéirling over the 1.16-mile course on three of the four days at the event. He will also head the outright record attempt.

Chilton commented: “I am looking forward to making my hill climbing debut. The challenge now is to transfer confidence and speed from testing on conventional tracks to Goodwood’s tight, undulating hill climbs. We’ll have a limited number of test runs and an audience in the hundreds of thousands, so it’s a challenging but great opportunity to show off how fast this car is on the world stage. .

“Constant downforce is largely an innovative feature to exploit as a driver,” he said. “It’s very different to what I’m used to driving in F1 and IndyCar – and testing this year has required me to adapt my driving style to maximize performance.”

You can watch McMurtry Spéirling tackle the Goodwood Hillclimb by following the “Batch 5” car race throughout the weekend. Saturday qualifying begins at 4:10 p.m. and Sunday’s shootout begins at 3:30 p.m.

Where does McMurtry come from? And where will it go?

The company is the brainchild of Irish inventor and businessman, Sir David McMurtry. His team includes engineers with backgrounds in Formula 1 racing and road car projects – and the company’s goals are clear and simple.

McMurtry wanted its new race car to fulfill its record-breaking mission first, but the company had already begun development of its first road car. Details are scant at the moment, but we expect it to take inspiration from the Spéirling racer.

Once Goodwood retires, its engineers will make a series of changes to the Spéirling and embark on a campaign of speed and lap record testing at a series of “prestigious locations”. We wouldn’t be surprised at all if the car follows the Volkswagen ID.R globally with the intention of knocking it off its perch. Watch this space.