We Entered a 1,050-HP EV in a Drag Race and Things Did Not Go as Planned

You see a lot of modern, mostly stock cars in the Sportsman class. The day I showed up at Milan, there was a Ford Explorer ST, a Cummins diesel-powered Ram 2500, and a late-model Pontiac Grand Prix competing. A Lucid Air would be a novelty in this crowd, but it wouldn't be totally out of place. Except I didn't enter the Lucid in the class. Couldn't enter it, actually. It's too quick. The Sportsman class races over a quarter mile, and anything quicker than 10.5 seconds will get you booted from competition. Our long-term Lucid has run a 10.2-second quarter mile, and another example has hit 10.0 seconds in MotorTrend testing.

Instead, I stepped up to the Pro class, which halves the distance of the race to an eighth mile and ratchets up the competition by an order of magnitude. I'd be racing against grizzled veterans with classic '60s and '70s American muscle in every flavor, Fox Body Mustangs, and Chevy S-10s (a cheap starting point that easily swallows a small-block V-8). Amidst stickered-up drag cars with wheelie bars, parachutes, and spoilers the size of picnic tables, the Lucid looked as natural as a DeLorean driving into 1885.

I was confident in the car, though. It was the driver I was worried about. Despite launching hundreds of cars while testing, I've only staged in front of a drag-racing Christmas tree exactly three times in my life. A quick reaction time—measured down to one-thousandth of a second—often separates the winners from everyone else in these races. My qualifications amount to paying $60 at the gate, signing a waiver, and answering "yes" when asked if I brought my own helmet. Pro? I wouldn't even consider myself a skilled amateur when it comes to competitive drag racing.

The day started with two practice runs before the elimination rounds began. In the competitive heats, racers painted an estimated time—their "dial-in"—on their cars, which gets entered into a computer as they pull up to the starting line. Two cars lined up for each race, and the Christmas tree was programmed so that if both drivers leave as soon as their light turns green and hit their dial-in times, it'll be a tie at the end of the eighth mile. In other words, the first car across the finish line advances to the next round. There are two exceptions: If you jump the green light or finish faster than your dial-in, you lose.

Heading into the race, I had looked at the Lucid's testing data and landed on 6.6 seconds as my bogey. I felt more confident when my first practice run yielded a 6.725-second eighth mile at 112.73 mph. During performance testing, the Lucid got quicker through the first couple launches, and I was counting on that happening again. But on the next practice run, the Air didn't just get a little bit quicker. It took off like it had an extra 50 horsepower and chopped nearly a half second off the time: 6.278 seconds at 124.56 mph. This left me in a lurch for the first elimination round. Was that time a fluke, or would the Lucid be just as unbelievably quick for the next run?

Not wanting to beat my estimate and "break out," I dialed in 6.15 seconds and lined up next to a fourth-gen Camaro Z28. Anyone could predict what happened next. The Air ran a wildly uncompetitive—based on my dial-in—6.620 seconds. The Z28 next to me ran an 8.500 on an 8.48 dial-in. Had I set my target at 6.6 seconds as originally planned, we would have been neck and neck for the win. But it hardly mattered that I was a metaphorical mile off from my predicted time, because I also left 0.001 second before the light turned green. In other words, I managed to lose twice in one race.

It's a humbling moment, not just because of my pathetic head-to-head drag-racing debut, but also because I completely underestimated how fierce the competition is here. I figured the Lucid's effortless grip would give me an advantage, but as more cars ran down the strip in the first round, it was stunning how freakishly precise the drivers were, regardless of what they were driving.

Technically I was eliminated from the competition, but the folks at Milan Dragway know a money-making opportunity when they see one. Who wants to go home when the racing is just getting started? No one, which is why you can buy your way back into the competition for $30 if you've lost in the first round. It's an easy decision for someone driving a six-figure car and with a corporate credit card.

I pulled up next to a second-gen Camaro for the next heat, this time with "6.6" painted on the Air's windows. Photos show the Lucid squatting over its rear tires during the launch, but I hardly noticed that from the driver's seat. Despite packing a prodigious 921 lb-ft of instantaneous torque, the Air GTP doesn't launch as hard as you might expect. Its 2.7-second 0-60 time isn't nearly as outrageous as the 10.0 quarter mile it's capable of. You can see it in the time slips from my drag-racing runs, too. While the rear-wheel-drive competition regularly covers the first 60 feet in about 1.3 seconds, the Lucid can only manage 1.7 seconds.

Of course, outright speed doesn't matter in bracket racing. What matters is that this time the Lucid did exactly what it's supposed to: a 6.625-second run at 115.04 mph on top of my decent 0.083-second reaction time. That's a good but not unbeatable showing. The Camaro next to me did a wicked wheelie that made it the winner in my eyes, but it finished on the wrong side of the driver's dial-in. I won by default.

The third round pitted me against a Chevy S-10 that finished just 0.043 second behind its dial-in. The Lucid held up its end of the bargain with a 6.632 run—just 0.032 second off my target—but my lazy 0.151-second reaction time meant I was second across the finish line and my day was over.

Although the Lucid Air's spontaneous burst of speed in the second practice round threw me for a loop, the car did exactly what I originally anticipated when it mattered. With some heat in the powertrain, the Lucid put three runs within 0.012 second of each other. You can't ask for more consistency than that.

Even if I weren't driving a spaceship on wheels, it would have been obvious to any observer that I was the new guy to the scene. Beyond reaction times that yo-yo'd from -0.001 to 0.151 second, I made rookie mistakes like driving straight through the water box (you're supposed to drive around it if you're not doing a burnout) and running the air conditioning in the pits (dropping more water where it shouldn't be). But in just five runs—five-eighths of a mile of driving—I learned a whole lot about the sport.

Given all the gas-versus-electric vitriol on social media and in our email inboxes, I expected some snarky comments for being the guy in the EV who didn't know what he was doing. But the racers, fans, and staff at Milan Dragway were nothing but supportive. People only had curiosity and enthusiasm for the electric car from another world dropping in on their hobby. Strip away the hostility inherent in the internet's normal operating state, and it turns out people who like fast cars and technology have a lot in common.