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Visceral ride around the infamous Nordschleife circuit
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Never seen footage of most powerful production Lotus
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Experience the car’s test & development laps with
Marking the anniversary of its landmark lap times when testing at the
Nürburgring Nordschleife,
of the Lotus 3-Eleven in full flight have been released, allowing enthusiasts to
experience the car’s visceral, white-knuckle ride around the “Green Hell” for
themselves.
Offering never-seen-before views, the 60 second videos provide a car’s eye view
of the facinating track, as it’s piloted by Nordschleife expert and professional
racer Marc Basseng, during its Nürburgring testing and development programme.
The videos not only show the car’s blistering straight-line speed, but also how
fast and composed it is when cornering, thanks it to its advanced aerodynamics.
At 150 mph (240 km/h) the Road version produces 150 kg of downforce, while Race
version with its twin front canards and adjustable rear wing produces 215 kg.
Since the car’s appearance at the Nürburgring, deliveries of the
hypercar-humbling Lotus have begun with the first lucky owners finding out what
this road-legal racer is truly capable of. Speaking about the car’s Nordschleife
debut, Jean-Marc Gales, Chief Executive Officer, Group Lotus plc said, “The
3-Eleven’s time on the track gave us the perfect opportunity to demonstrate its
phenomenal pace. It’s the fastest, most focused production road car to ever
leave the Lotus factory, and remains true to our values of intelligent and
efficient engineering. However, you don’t need to be a professional racing
driver in order to tap its potential, and it will embarrass so-called hypercars
with six-figure price tags. It remains the perfect template for how we will
approach the design of all Lotus sports cars in the future”
With lightweight carbon composite bodywork as standard, the Lotus 3-Eleven has a
dry weight of 890 kg and maximum power of 460 hp (Race version). This provides
an enviable power-to-weight ratio of 517 hp per tonne, and the car is capable of
sprinting from 0 to 60 mph in 2.9 seconds ahead of a maximum speed of 180 mph
(290 km/h). The Road version with a dry weight of 925 kg and a maximum power of
410 hp reaches 60 mph in 3.3 seconds before reaching a top speed of 174 mph (280
km/h).
The videos also show how driver Marc Basseng had to deal with other cars also on
the Nordschleife circuit during the evening public sessions. In what was its
first turn of a wheel outside of Lotus’ Hethel HQ, Marc was one of three
different drivers helping to develop the car – each one with individual areas of
expertise and focussing on aerodynamics, engine calibration, chassis tuning and
suspension geometry.
The Lotus 3-Eleven is the most powerful road car to wear a Lotus badge and
Hethel’s quickest ever road car. It joins the ranks of those rare cars that can
reach 60 mph in under three seconds and 100 mph in six seconds. To complement
these figures, the Lotus 3-Eleven possesses a purity of the driving experience
and the benchmark handling for which all Lotus cars are renowned.
Images copyright Group Lotus PLC
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