Official race starts at 3:30 in the video; the first run was a dud due to wrong gear placement.
The Koenigsegg Agera R may not have all-wheel drive or a hybrid electric powertrain, but it’s got it where it counts.
The high-powered Swede recently met the ever-popular Porsche 918 Spyder at Germany’s Papenburg Test Track, but things didn’t go as planned for the hybrid Porsche.
In a video posted by GTBOARD, you can see the torquey 918 starting well from a roll. This makes sense given that the electric motors produce instant torque. Sure enough, though, the black Agera starts getting bigger in the rear view.
The twin turbos were funneling air into the 5.0-liter V8 with cosmic force now, producing a mind-bending 1,124 horsepower and pushing the Koenigsegg forward. The 887–hp 918 simply wasn’t fast enough to keep up, and that’s not a sentence you’ll hear every day.
To make things worse, this wasn’t even a standard Spyder. The roadster was equipped with the Weissach package, a factory-installed option that includes lighter magnesium wheels, brakes, and connectors, resulting in a curb weight of 3,616 pounds (down from 3,715 lbs).
Of course, from a stop, the Porsche would fare better against the rear-wheel drive Swede. Races from a roll are common handicaps among all-wheel drive street racers, who know that most two-wheelers can’t compete with four-wheeled grip.
This is backed up with real world figures. The AWD Porsche can manage 0 to 60 mph in just 2.5 seconds with the Weissach package. The Agera R, by contrast, posts a slower time of 2.8 seconds.
Once the Koenigsegg gains traction, though, the result would likely be the same as in the video above. The Agera R is much more powerful, is lighter, and most importantly: it knows how to win.
