Hot laps in my 2025 Air GT at Laguna Seca

[KpaBap]

SpeedSF was having an HDPE at Laguna Seca this Friday (10/17) and I jumped on the chance to take the Lucid to see what it could do. It's been about 7 years since I last did any HPDE whatsoever, but I have done dozens of them over the last 20 or so years in a supercharged (~200hp) Miata and an RX-8.

Here's my brief summary of observations from driving the Lucid:

Lap times - I was running 1:56 or so - this is more a reflection of my rustiness than the car capabilities. This lap time is comparable to a stock ND Miata driven by a pro driver. I felt that 10 seconds can easily be "found" by - better tires, better brakes, and more time seat time.

Brakes - barely adequate, I got pretty bad fade towards the end of sessions, and possibly the fluid boiled. My brake pedal still feels a little off/mushy 2 days later which is never a good sign. I didn't track brake wear because it was my first time after a long hiatus and I was taking it easy and braking quite early into corners.

Tire wear - I ran the OEM 20 inch Michelin Pilot Sport EV. Surprisingly little noticeable tire wear. I was expecting about 50% of the tread to be gone after the day, but in reality, not much seems to have worn off at all.

Tire performance - traction felt good for the first 6-7 laps but started feeling greasy towards the end of sessions with the rear end of the car getting more and more playful with every lap- clearly the tires are working overtime dealing with the weight and power. Turn in and breakaway characteristics also felt good, nothing really to complain about here.

Overall handling - it's a big fat luxo-boat sedan, let's get that out of the way first. It will never be anyone's dedicated track car and that's okay. You get to go home with air-conditioned seats, a massage, and maybe your entire family in the car.

The car seems to be set up fairly neutral, with a slight bias to oversteer - this is great as there are no big, surprising deficiencies here and in this way drives very similar to how my RX-8 did. It does get a bit upset under hard braking with the rear getting a bit more squirrelly - I attribute this to the sheer weight of the car. Traction control works very hard pretty much the entire time as the tires just cannot handle the power. I ended up wishing for a smooth mode with stiff suspension settings as this would both save on battery and tire heat and tighten things up in the corners.

Energy usage and charging - Each ~25-minute lap session used up about 25% of battery capacity or about 0.7mi/kWh as shown on the screen. The Tesla Superchargers at Laguna Seca are an afterthought and not useful for non-Teslas for several reasons - the staff at LS park their personal cars in the spots and seemed somewhat ornery when I asked them if they could remove them so I could charge. This was necessary because the Supercharger cables are super short, requiring absolute nonsense parking shenanigans in the Lucid. The chargers are seemingly locked to Teslas only - they don't appear on the Tesla app, charging fails to start, but I observed all the Teslas at the event were charging just fine.

This is all to say, charging is a nightmare and makes Laguna Seca track days questionable at best. During the lunch break, I had to drive ~30 mins away from Laguna Seca to Pacific Grove, got lucky that an EA charger was even available, charged up to 90% in about 45 mins then rush back to the track, with just about 10 minutes to spare until my next session. If any of this went wrong, or I hit traffic, I would have missed 1 out of the 4 sessions for the day.

Miscellaneous other notes - this is not an easy car to drive very fast; the weight is extremely obvious and forces you into more of a touring driving style with well planned, long and easy smooth transitions rather than the more chopped up point and shoot style I could use with my Miata and RX-8. Diving deep into the braking zone feels suicidal.

Although the Lucid has 820hp this is mostly an illusion on the track - traction control is working overtime and cutting power heavily most of the time. I'd say the "usable" power is closer to 450-500hp - this is based on how I observed my car accelerating relative to other cars in my run group.

After about 10-12 laps, the car heavily derates power likely due to heat management. At one point accelerating from 60mph felt pretty similar to my old NB Miata (138hp).

Wouldn't be a Lucid without software jank - after the day was over, for about an hour the car showed zero energy usage, then randomly recovered.

 

[knewman]

Neat experience, I'd love to hoon around Laguna Seca some day. My Air probably wouldn't be my first choice though they can only hide that weight so much.

 

[WeighingGravity]

Really interesting write-up. Thank you for sharing. I know next to nothing about real performance driving and have only been on a track twice and never at anything close to a limit. Your comments on weight are interesting; EV mass was on my mind last week; I was driving a (ICE) rental on the Autobahn between Nuremberg and Munich and wondering how my soon-to-be-delivered Gravity would have been to drive. I'd imagine some of it would have been amazing and felt great, but in those moments when suddenly you have to brake from 140 to 90 or so because traffic suddenly gets congested or a box truck tries to pass while you're bearing down, I wondered how the Gravity's mass would have challenged the braking performance.

 

[KpaBap]

I haven't driven the Gravity but we can use the Air GT as a reference - as posted in this forum, it takes somewhere between 115 to 127 feet to stop from 60mph depending on tire/wheel choice: https://lucidowners.com/threads/60-0-braking-distance.714/
Given the Gravity is even heavier and the rubber is about the same, I would expect slightly worse numbers at best.

This is actually a fairly mediocre braking performance, with high performance sports cars coming in well under 100ft. https://www.motortrend.com/features/braking-time
You can see the top performers - Mustang and 911 pulling it off in 86-87ft. 40+ft is definitely the difference between a nothing burger and a totaled car.

Ok @KpaBap, that's a quite extreme example as these are purpose built race cars and neither the AGT nor the Gravity are.

So let's take their actual competition as a reference:

The Taycan Turbo S is the closest in terms of power and weight to an AGT and does it in 105ft according to MT: https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/...ismo-electric-station-wagon-first-test-review

The Rivian R1S quad motor (Gravity competitor) does it in 107ft although MT notes the 2/3 motor versions do it in ~127ft. https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/2025-rivian-r1s-quad-motor-first-test-review

All that said - a single panic stop (and these 60-0 tests) mostly depends on your tires- note the R1S uses humongous 305mm wide tires in the rear and 275s in the front. So, this is something you can easily upgrade if you are so inclined by just getting stickier and wider tires.

Unfortunately, data is scarce or non-existent for repeated hard braking performance (like for track racing) where the pads heat soak, the fluid may boil, the tires are melting, and generally the demands on the braking system are much higher. You get to find out yourself, as I did.

Easier to digest table:

Model	Stopping distance
Lucid Air GT - 19" wheels	~127ft
Lucid Air GT - 21" wheels	~115ft
Porsche Taycan Turbo S	~105ft
Rivian R1S Quad	~107ft
Rivian R1S 2/3 motor	~127ft
150,000 ton container ship (if it could go 60mph)	~9-12 miles
Freight train	~1-2 miles

 

[coma24]

What an awesome writeup! As someone who spent 2hrs/day for several years driving the same 100 mile loop in the hills of the Bay Area in a stock first-year Honda S2k, I appreciate a nimble, well-balanced car. My heart sank a little when I read the description of how it went when you pushed your GT hard. I can't say I'm shocked, though. As you said, it's not a track car. The Sapphire sounds like it is much more up to the task of being repeatedly hurled around a track, with no thermal limiting, and zero brake fade.

It's a BIG ask to employ racing-level brake usage for long periods of time in a car that isn't set up for it, so I suppose the results are predictable.

That's no bueno on the charging situation there. I'm sure it sucked to have to leave and charge up within a narrow timeframe like that.

Thanks for taking the time to share the details! Maybe I should keep my S2k after all!

 

[jbawden]

If you never drove an Air, you would think it IS a Miata based on how much praise it gets around here for being a sports car. The OP validates my thoughts of the Air as a sports car...it isn't. I really enjoy time behind the wheel as a touring car that eats miles with ease. It's fun in the mountains at a one pedal pace, but its clumsy at anything more spicy.

 

[tuffode]

It's fun in the mountains at a one pedal pace, but its clumsy at anything more spicy.

I really don't know what you are talking about, it handles so well at the limit. Something I cannot say about cars like the new 5 Series (even the last generation). I have great backroads by me that I take my 2700 pound 5 speed 35 year old BMW on, and I take the Lucid on the same roads and I can drive them in the same intense manner. So controllable, so driftable, one of the easiest cars to control on the limit. I am at 14k miles and already have replaced the rears twice, I'm having a blast. Whatever the opposite of clumsy is, that is how it drives. It is a sports sedan through and through (not a sports car).

 

[jbawden]

I really don't know what you are talking about, it handles so well at the limit. Something I cannot say about cars like the new 5 Series (even the last generation). I have great backroads by me that I take my 2700 pound 5 speed 35 year old BMW on, and I take the Lucid on the same roads and I can drive them in the same intense manner. So controllable, so driftable, one of the easiest cars to control on the limit. I am at 14k miles and already have replaced the rears twice, I'm having a blast. Whatever the opposite of clumsy is, that is how it drives. It is a sports sedan through and through (not a sports car).

I guess you don't have much experience in sports cars, which was my point. It's way too heavy to even be considered a true sports sedan, in my opinion. What it is in my mind is sublime grand touring car, but we can agree to disagree.

By the way, maybe my opinion would change if I was "drifting" and driving "at the limit", but as someone with 25 years of racing and track days I would NEVER even come close to driving like that on public roads. Believe me, here in Northern CA there is an abundance of world class mountain and coastal routes (not to mention race tracks) where a proper sport sedan would set sail on an Air.

 

[codys21]

Glad to see I'm not the only one who decided to track their Air!

We definitely have some similar conclusions, but I think the fact my car is "only" 480hp makes a difference to what you said; that power would basically be like having a smooth mode in the GT and probably reduces battery usage (though I actually had higher usage, which may be related to me driving harder or simply the layout of the track itself.) The GT also weighs ~300 lbs more.

 

[illopp00]

I haven't driven the Gravity but we can use the Air GT as a reference - as posted in this forum, it takes somewhere between 115 to 127 feet to stop from 60mph depending on tire/wheel choice: https://lucidowners.com/threads/60-0-braking-distance.714/
Given the Gravity is even heavier and the rubber is about the same, I would expect slightly worse numbers at best.

This is actually a fairly mediocre braking performance, with high performance sports cars coming in well under 100ft. https://www.motortrend.com/features/braking-time
You can see the top performers - Mustang and 911 pulling it off in 86-87ft. 40+ft is definitely the difference between a nothing burger and a totaled car.

Ok @KpaBap, that's a quite extreme example as these are purpose built race cars and neither the AGT nor the Gravity are.

So let's take their actual competition as a reference:

The Taycan Turbo S is the closest in terms of power and weight to an AGT and does it in 105ft according to MT: https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/...ismo-electric-station-wagon-first-test-review

The Rivian R1S quad motor (Gravity competitor) does it in 107ft although MT notes the 2/3 motor versions do it in ~127ft. https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/2025-rivian-r1s-quad-motor-first-test-review

All that said - a single panic stop (and these 60-0 tests) mostly depends on your tires- note the R1S uses humongous 305mm wide tires in the rear and 275s in the front. So, this is something you can easily upgrade if you are so inclined by just getting stickier and wider tires.

Unfortunately, data is scarce or non-existent for repeated hard braking performance (like for track racing) where the pads heat soak, the fluid may boil, the tires are melting, and generally the demands on the braking system are much higher. You get to find out yourself, as I did.

Easier to digest table:

Model	Stopping distance
Lucid Air GT - 19" wheels	~127ft
Lucid Air GT - 21" wheels	~115ft
Porsche Taycan Turbo S	~105ft
Rivian R1S Quad	~107ft
Rivian R1S 2/3 motor	~127ft
150,000 ton container ship (if it could go 60mph)	~9-12 miles
Freight train	~1-2 miles

The Sapphire on Trofeo RS is low 90s feet stopping distance, but it also has massive Carbon Ceramics as many of those cars do.

 

[tuffode]

I guess you don't have much experience in sports cars, which was my point. It's way too heavy to even be considered a true sports sedan, in my opinion. What it is in my mind is sublime grand touring car, but we can agree to disagree.

Yeah I have a 2700 pound E30 5 Speed in the garage, I know what a good lightweight car feels like. I also just bought a 2018 M2, not lightweight, but a sporty car. Can't just assume these things haha.

 

[DejeriusWhite]

What an awesome writeup! As someone who spent 2hrs/day for several years driving the same 100 mile loop in the hills of the Bay Area in a stock first-year Honda S2k, I appreciate a nimble, well-balanced car. My heart sank a little when I read the description of how it went when you pushed your GT hard. I can't say I'm shocked, though. As you said, it's not a track car. The Sapphire sounds like it is much more up to the task of being repeatedly hurled around a track, with no thermal limiting, and zero brake fade.

It's a BIG ask to employ racing-level brake usage for long periods of time in a car that isn't set up for it, so I suppose the results are predictable.

That's no bueno on the charging situation there. I'm sure it sucked to have to leave and charge up within a narrow timeframe like that.

Thanks for taking the time to share the details! Maybe I should keep my S2k geometry dash lite after all!

It's fascinating to hear about your experience at Laguna Seca with the Lucid. Your transition from driving a supercharged Miata and an RX-8 to the 2025 Air GT must have been quite exhilarating after seven years. The SpeedSF HDPE event sounds like a fantastic opportunity to push the Lucid to its limits and witness its performance firsthand. Exploring different cars on the track can offer unique insights into handling and power delivery. Have you noticed any significant differences in driving dynamics between your previous vehicles and the Air GT?