Driving the world’s smallest vehicle, the three-wheeled Peel P50 microcar, on the world’s largest track, the Nürburgring Nordschleife, is probably one of the dumbest things you can do in all of cardom. Doing it in the dark when you’ve never been in a P50 before, and never driven the Nordschleife before, is all the dumber. But that’s exactly what driver Max Fewtrell decided to do, attempting to set a ‘record’ for the fastest lap in a P50. Nobody had ever done it before, so he really just needed to finish the lap to get the record. And finish it he did!
Because the track is so vast, and the P50 is so slow, Fewtrell had to rent out the whole track for an hour in order to set his ‘record’, and the authorities gave him the final hour of the day, from 7:30 PM to 8:30 PM, to get the job done. When he first set off, the throttle cable broke, and took about 20 minutes to repair, so really he had to get it done in under 40 minutes. A pure race against the clock, the way real racing should be. There’s a lot that could have gone wrong here, but at least with the circuit closed, he wasn’t going to get rear ended by a 911 GT3 RS at speed while trying to climb a hill with three horsepower.
Absurdity is high in this video, and it’s well worth watching as a result. Thankfully he doesn’t just leave the camera rolling for the full lap, because that would get quite boring. The full length of the video is about 14 minutes less than his full ‘record’ lap of 25 minutes and 44 seconds. And that’s purely astonishing.
Would I attempt to beat this record in a P50? No, probably not, but I’ll sure try it with the sportier Peel Trident! Watch your back, Fewtrell, your record is about to get beat! All I need to do is find the cash to rent out the ‘Ring, and borrow a Peel Trident to do it in!