Xpeng and Andreas Mikkelsen slide into Guinness World Record books
Xpeng and World Rally Championship driver, Andreas Mikkelsen, have taken the Guinness World Record for the world’s longest drift in an electric car, standing at 45.729 miles.
Mikkelsen, who has three WRC victories and two WRC2 titles to his name, claimed the record behind the wheel of an Xpeng P7 sports saloon, which has up to 586bhp. The anti-clockwise, 216-lap attempt took place around a closed off roundabout in Shanghai. Over the course of the run’s one hour and 33 minutes, the road surface was constantly sprayed with water to keep friction as low as possible.
The Norwegian, who dovetails his WRC2 programme with Skoda alongside a role with Xpeng in Norway, told DirtFish that he was inspired after watching a Porsche Taycan set the previous world record for the world’s longest drift at 42 kilometres.
“Next to Skoda I’m also doing some work with Xpeng in Norway, and they only have electric vehicles,” he said. “So I thought: ‘Hmm, maybe it’s possible to try to beat this record because I think rally drivers, they know how to slide a car. They have a feeling for the car.
“So I was talking with Xpeng Norway to see if it was possible, and they connected with the team in China, and the global team, and they started to do some testing to see if it’s actually possible, because there’s many factors that you have to calculate here.
“The battery: can it survive? And not only the length of it, because you have so much friction from the tires. So first of all, [you have to consider] the temperature of the motor and the length [of the drift], and they saw quite quickly it was actually possible to beat this record. So there I was, suddenly on a flight down to Shanghai!”
Mikkelsen said that maintaining focus was key to securing his world record.
“I just had to think that I’m going into this really, really, really long stage, and I just trued to keep the concentration as high as possible,” he explained. “Because on the test runs, I had quite a high heart rate – 150 average with 170 peak, which was quite high.
“So actually I really focused as well on my breathing to try not to be too tense. On the run itself, my heart rate was 20-30 beats lower than on the test so I think I managed it quite well. But what was quite fun to see is when I passed the record, my heart rate dropped immediately.
“I was very much able to relax after that, which made it much easier. Of course when you’re getting closer to the record, you’re getting more nervous as well.”
Mikkelsen concluded his run with just 5% of the car’s battery remaining.
“That’s also a nice thing is that I really did my job well,” Mikkelsen he wrapped up. “I was not, let’s say, the limiting factor here. But I tell you, it was a lot of pressure. I brought the idea to Xpeng and they then set everything in motion to make this happen.
“If I messed it up and that would be really bad. So I’m very happy that we managed to do it. It was really, really nice and hopefully this record can stand for a very long time.”
The sole Xpeng model available in the UK is the G6 SUV, which is priced from £39,990 for the entry-level Standard Range model.
Mikkelsen’s latest attempt shows the strength and record breaking-ability of electric drivetrains. Last year, Yangwang – the luxury subsidiary from BYD – smashed the Nürburgring lap record with its 2,959bhp U9 Xtreme hypercar.
