The Model S Plaid has been the talk of the town ever since it was launched last year. It has become the king of the drag strip within a short span of time, but it wasn’t as good on circuits and tracks as it was on straight roads. Don’t get me wrong, it is a beast even there, but it needed something like the Model 3 Performance’s Track Mode to complete it. Fast forward to the present day, Tesla has done exactly that.
The Tesla Model S Plaid is now available with the Track Mode, an over-the-air update that has already started rolling out, to make cornering on this just as good as its straight-line sprints.
The Plaid Track Mode has been introduced to make the EV handle better and carve corners in a vigorous manner. The Track Mode includes Lateral Torque Vectoring, wherein the car will automatically adjust the torque split across the rear wheels independently, which applies a torque bias to rotate the car through turns. This will allow the driver to have a better turn-in response, an improved on-center steering feel, and better overall control around the corners.
The Track Mode will also allow you to adjust the car’s dynamics. In the standard tuning, the stability control system is optimized to limit the tire slippage to keep you safe. Here, however, the stability control system receives a race tuning so you can control the car’s lateral movement. It comes with a Vehicle Dynamics Controller that evaluates steering angle, accelerator, and brake pedal inputs from the driver. It will even allow tire slippage for high-speed cornering.
It also comes with Adaptive Suspension Damping that reduces the pitch during hard braking and when the A-pedal is floored.
Apart from this, there are changes made to the user interface on the 17-inch touchscreen and the display behind the yoke steering to provide relevant performance data. Other than various customization options, it includes:
Tesla has also ensured an optimized powertrain cooling to handle all the heat generated by the brakes, motors, and batteries. The Plaid Track Mode will come with increased regen braking power as well.
The automaker also noted that the Track Mode’s goal was to help the Model S Plaid become the fastest EV to lap the Nürburgring, which it did a few months back. Of the two runs, the first run was completed in 7:30.909 minutes with an average speed of 103.34 mph (166.320 kph), and the second run in 7:35.579 minutes with an average speed of 102.29 mph (164.614 kph). The Model S Plaid broke the Porsche Taycan’s record of 7:42 it set in 2019.
It was also during this run that we uncovered the official top speed of the car. On paper, it has a top speed of 200 mph, but it was during this run we saw the car touch 269 kph (167.14 mph). Brooks from DragTimes took the updated Tesla Model S Plaid for a top speed run and the car topped out at 173 mph. This was on an uphill with two people on board. Also, that particular example was equipped with a non-stock set of wheels. Perhaps, that made a difference as well.
Tesla is also offering a carbon-ceramic brake kit which will be available from mid-2022. The carbon-ceramic brake kit is priced at $20,0000 and includes:
One thing that you must note that is that the carbon-ceramic brake kit is compatible only with the 21-inch Arachnid wheels, which is a $4,500 option.
It’ll be interesting to see if the company will introduce a Track Package for the Model S Plaid as it did for the Model 3 Performance when it rolled out the Track Mode V2 in 2020. To give you an idea, this $5,500-Track Package came with the following things:
We’ll have to wait and watch if Tesla comes up with a Track Package for the Model S Plaid or not. What we can have instead is a Plaid+ Package that will complement the Track Mode very well.
What are your thoughts on the Plaid Track Mode? Share them with us in the comments section below.
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