Remember The Insane Flying Tesla Model 3? It's Being Rebuilt For Pikes Peak
Perseverance is the name of the game. And we’ll see it shine on Sunday.
We are sure you must have seen the spectacular accident the “Flying Tesla” suffered while preparing for the PPIHC (Pikes Peak International Hill Climb). If you did not, we have exclusive new images that show how it was in this article, but it is not about that. This text is about perseverance: the Unplugged Performance team is running against the clock to rebuild the Model 3 in time for Sunday.
Kyle Conner, our man at the competition, brought the information to us in the tweet below.
As you can see, the team managed to buy a donor Model 3 to replace the damaged parts and make the Sunday run – the one that really counts. So far, we know they had to replace the entire front and rear subframes, including motors. The battery and chassis were fine, which is surprising in such a strong hit. The Unplugged Performance parts were so strong that most of them broke the stock components in the accident. We'll try to get a complete list of all that had to be replaced.
Unplugged Performance also released another video that shows a different perspective of the accident. Have a look.
We can only imagine how frustrated Randy Pobst must have felt. Regardless of that, the critical part is that he is ok and will be able to do attempt the PPIHC record on Sunday as he intended to. The goal is to complete the run in less than ten minutes.
Besides the Unplugged Performance team, there is just another Model 3 in the competition, brought by the Electric Performance team. There were three of them, but Josh Allen also had a crash. In fact, his car was the first one to leave the competition. Being just an enthusiast, he probably did not have a chance to try to fix his machine for Sunday.
Let’s hope that the Unplugged Performance team manages to rebuild their car in time for the competition. Even if it does not meet the time it wanted to achieve, being there will be a perseverance victory – and EV advocates will celebrate that as much as a sub-10-minutes time, no matter what. Fingers crossed!
We'd like to thank @Teslaphotographer and Dan Oldfield Photography for the exclusive shots. Thanks, guys!
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