2013 REFUEL Race open to entries, on for June 30, Laguna Seca

The Refuel Races are returning to Laguna Seca for the 5th year.  I've covered that event for 3 out of the 4 years it has existed, and the 2012 race was awesome if only because of the sheer number of electric vehicles on the track at one time.  The electric car portion in 2012 had over 30 entrants, 12+ of which were either Tesla Roadsters or Tesla Model S's.  It was simply amazing watching an electric car race where there was a serious traffic jam problem because of the number of cars on the track at the same time.

I believe it was Brian Hall (a long time electric race vehicle builder) who said to me, watching this spectacle, that it was almost certainly the largest number ever of high performance electric vehicles racing on a track at the same time.

For the 2013 event, signups are now open.  It costs a bit of money to participate, and the amount is a fraction of what it would cost for a regular track day.  The total number of entrants per class is being limited. 

The company is encouraging anybody with an electric car to enter, and the 2011 and 2012 events had a number of Nissan Leaf owners participating. 

Initial report on REFUEL 2012 electric car and electric motorcycle racing at Laguna Seca

I had the best of intentions to post several quick reports from the track throughout the day at the REFUEL 2012 event, but did only the one.  Now it's late at night and I just want to go to sleep.  But it'll be good to write up a quick something about this awesome day of electric car and motorcycle racing at Laguna Seca.

First, the event was LOTS bigger than last years REFUEL race.  This is the fourth year of the REFUEL series, and it has simply gotten bigger and better every year.  What's made the difference is that manufacturers are making real electric vehicles, in quantity, now.  The first REFUEL race in 2009 was a lot of conversion vehicles and a few Tesla Roadsters.  This year we had a whole flotilla of production electric motorcycles from Zero Motorcycles, and in the cars we had Tesla Roadsters, Nissan Leaf's, BMW ActiveE's, a souped up Coda electric sedan, a couple Chevy Volts, and, get this, six Tesla Model S's, as well as a few conversion cars.

Unfortunately, of the top end electric motorcycles, only Brammo's Empulse RR showed up.  Nobody from Lightning, MotoCzysz or Mission.  We'll have to wait for the Laguna Seca e-Power/TTXGP for that, and even there it's very unlikely Mission will show up.

There were maybe 30 electric cars in the race.  This was a seriously big grid of electric cars, and it was about 10000% awesome to see the track packed to the gills with electric cars.  And for them to be as awesome as the Tesla Model S is, was way more exciting than I could imagine.

I'm not going to post numbers yet - but in the time trial event, the Model S's smoked the Roadsters.  Of the 25 cars in the time trial, the top three spots were won by Model S drivers.  Think about this - the Model S is a full size sedan, okay probably they were Performance models(?), and they beat Tesla Roadsters, which are ostensibly race cars!

One little factoid about the Tesla results is that Joe Nuxoll, a former Tesla employee who is a racing instructor in his spare time, was not a driver for the Tesla team this year.  Perhaps the Tesla results would have been a bit better had he driven with them this time around.  Last year, when he was a Tesla employee, he drove a Roadster during the REFUEL event, and drove a 1:50 lap time in a Tesla Roadster.  This year, despite the Model S's beating the Roadster's this year, Joe's 1:50 record stands unbroken.  According to Joe, some of the drivers for Tesla this year are good race drivers, and should have been able to beat his time, but they didn't.

The Leaf's did surprisingly well, in some cases, as did the souped up Coda.

In the motorcycles, the Brammo Empulse RR was of course about a zillion times faster than the Zero S's.  The Zero S's have a top speed of 88 miles/hr, and the Empulse RR can maybe hit 150 miles/hr.  Their lap times were close to 2:00, his was 1:40.  It's too bad the proper competitors to the Empulse RR was not there.

Electric Vehicle Racing at Laguna Seca

For three years now Speed Ventures has held an electric track day (race) event at the Laguna Seca raceway.  Below is a video shot at the 2011 event.

I've attended the event twice and written these race reports:

• REFUEL brings Tesla's and more to Laguna Seca for 3rd year of electric racing 
• Brammo, Mission, and Zero go head-head at REFUEL in preview of TTXGP next month
• Tesla's at the Races, Laguna Seca and the Wayland Invitational Drags