What it Feels Like to Ride Shotgun in the World’s Fastest Car
“Go straight for, like, 50 seconds, and you’re good,” Miro Zrnčević calls out with a broad smirk to the man at the wheel of a Ferrari F80.
We’re in the starting queue at the 2025 Goodwood Festival of Speed, that annual cathedral of automotive excess where grown men worship at the altar of horsepower. Zrnčević occupies the driver’s seat of the world record-setting Rimac Nevera R while I’m strapped into the passenger seat. The gentleman piloting the F80? “That’s Rafi,” Zrnčević explains with easy familiarity. “We go way back.” That would be Raffaele de Simone, Ferrari’s chief test driver.
My driver possesses similar credentials. Zrnčević, Bugatti Rimac’s chief test and development driver, has spent 11 years with the company after befriending CEO Mate Rimac during his stint as an automotive journalist (his mechanical engineering degree didn’t hurt). He notched the Goodwood production car record in 2023 and was behind the wheel when the Nevera set the world speed record in 2022.
And this Nevera R? The $2.7 million, 2,107-horsepower, quad-motor electric missile just arrived in England, fresh from Germany’s Papenburg track, where it just set the world record for accelerating from zero to 249 mph in 25.79 seconds. Zero to 60 takes just 1.66 seconds.
Such acceleration doesn’t just move you. It reorganizes your relationship with physics and leaves your brain scrambling to catch up.
Moments before our sprint up the 1.16 mile hill, Zrnčević gives a brief rundown on how this very car—a production mule he helped develop—differs from its predecessor: “More aero, Michelin Cup 2 tires, tuned dampers, tweaked torque vectoring; we changed a lot of things by a small margin, but they add up to a completely different car. The standard Nevera is an all-weather hypercar. This is more radical, agile, and more violent.”
Goodwood changed its regulations so our timed run isn’t for official standings, which means more fun can be had. Zrnčević twists a dial, engaging drift mode, a setting that channels 100 percent of that four-digit power to the rear wheels while disabling the stability control. He adjusts the dampers to medium; the track’s bumpy surface demands maximum grip over outright stiffness. The Nevera R begins to hum, its cooling system cycling up like a prizefighter’s breathing before the bell.
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Image Credit: Rimac “This hill climb is very tricky,” Zrnčević says as we tug on helmets. “It’s a rally stage; narrow and bumpy, crowned for drainage. You’re going from on- to off-camber often, so the car’s always moving weirdly. There are longitudinal bumps, too. You go from hero to zero in a half second if you touch the grass. And 11 million people see you crash,” he says. No pressure.
Our turn to shine. Zrnčević grips the wheel and waits for the signal, a finger point from a track marshal. It comes, and all I hear is those Cup 2s squeal as they vaporize, a cloud of smoke rising in the rearview is so dense that I can’t see anything but white. For the first 50 feet, it feels like we’re barely pushing forward, merely eviscerating rubber. I cackle maniacally, but then the car hooks up.
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Image Credit: Rimac In a flash, Zrnčević flicks to track mode for maximum power. Here, computers modulate minimal degrees of wheel slip before finding optimal traction. We rocket toward the first turn with forces above 1.6gs. Leaning forward becomes impossible.
The Nevera R jostles from the bumpy surface, but Zrnčević’s steering inputs keep us aimed true. It’s a short haul to the second corner, an on-to off-camber exchange, where Zrnčević lifts to allow the Nevera R to hook up before mashing the accelerator to the carbon fiber floor.
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Image Credit: Rimac We’re on a stretch of the hill climb that takes us past all the major grandstands and under the pedestrian bridge. It’s straight enough for Zrnčević to keep his foot in it, and the full onslaught of those 2,107 horses is nothing short of savage. The grandstands blur, and slight tunnel vision creeps in. My stomach processes the forces imparted upon it; these sensations, while intense, are intoxicating.
Into the forest section, runoff disappears, replaced by hay bales. This tunnel effect amplifies our speed sensation. I have no idea how fast we’re going, but it feels ungodly quick with zero margin for error. We barely slow down. It’s impossible to say which is more unrelenting: the Nevera R or Zrnčević.
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Image Credit: Rimac A few light kinks, and we cross the finish line. It’s been less than a minute, every second pure exhilaration.
As we wait for our group to finish, I ask how hard he was pushing. Seven-tenths? Eight-tenths? His wry smile suggests he was barely trying. “Speed’s relative now,” he says. “When you’re doing a world record run at 430 kph and you slow down to 300 kph, it feels like walking.” Those 50 seconds of controlled chaos never felt slow to me, sir.
Authors
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Sean Evans
