Former F1 world driver’s champion Nico Rosberg has been avidly throwing his support behind electric vehicles ever since he retired from the sport. Recently, he had the chance to test a pair of Tesla Model 3s at the handling track of Circuit Paul Ricard.
The German racer-turned-YouTuber has driven a host of the industry’s most performance-focused vehicles on the market at the tight and twisty handling circuit, including a McLaren Senna and Ferrari 488 Pista. The Model 3 Performance certainly isn’t on the same level, but is very impressive in its own right.
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Rosberg’s clip kicks off with him briefly testing out the straight-line performance of a Tesla Model S, presumably the range-topping P100D model. After that, he hits the circuit eager to see the difference between the Model 3 with Track Mode enabled and disabled.
This mode tightens up the car’s handling for high-speed driving and, according to Rosberg, sends additional power to the front wheels when it senses a little bit of oversteer and more to the rear when it detects understeer in order to balance things out.
With the Track Mode disabled, Rosberg recorded a fastest lap of 1:06.750. With it on, the time dropped to 1:05.148 seconds, more than one and a half seconds faster. That’s very impressive, particularly when you consider that the Track Mode doesn’t lower the sedan’s ride height or deploy additional aero parts like similar functions on cars such as the McLaren P1 and Ford GT.