- Even three years on, the Tesla Model S Plaid can still humiliate a supercar.
- Even with less weight and more power, the 2025 Corvette ZR1 loses every time.
- The Tesla rockets ahead in all drag races in this video, never giving the Corvette a chance.
The hype around the Tesla Model S Plaid has mostly died off since the car is now around three years old and it’s no longer the only EV with 1,000 horsepower or more. However, even if it’s not the newest electric sedan with whiplash-inducing acceleration, its 0 to 60 mph time of 1.9 seconds is still hard to beat, even in cars with more power.
You would think the 2025 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1, with its monumental 5.5-liter flat-plane crank V-8 engine that churns out 1,064 hp, would have no problem out-accelerating a Model S Plaid, which was recently given a very mild update. The Vette is only rear-wheel drive, so it needs four-tenths more to hit sixty from a standstill. However, its superior power, combined with much less weight, should give it the edge in a drag race against the Tesla. Right?
It turns out that the Tesla starts ahead and stays ahead throughout an entire quarter-mile drag race. It’s not even close. The Model S Plaid consistently does quarter-mile runs in the low nine-second range, while the Corvette struggles to dip below 10 seconds in this video by DragTimes.
The Plaid has considerably more torque, 1,050 pound-feet versus 828 lb-ft in the Corvette, but it’s also over 1,100 pounds heavier, coming in just shy of 5,000 lbs. The Corvette’s power-to-weight advantage is undeniable, though, and it should come much closer to matching the Model S through the quarter-mile.
The first run was the best for the Corvette, with its best time to 60 feet of 1.57 seconds. The Tesla had a 1.46-second time in the same run, but it shoots ahead as if the difference was far greater than that. It almost makes the ZR1 look like it’s struggling to accelerate, but that’s just how big a difference there is in sheer acceleration between these two cars.
In all subsequent runs, the Tesla beats the Corvette by a bigger margin. Judging by how quickly it sprints ahead, the ZR1 would likely not be able to catch up even if this were a longer race. Maybe in a one-mile straight-line sprint, it could claw back some of the difference and take the lead from the Tesla, whose acceleration does begin to taper off after it reaches 150 mph and approaches its top speed of 200 mph.
Maybe it just takes an even crazier Corvette ZR1 to beat a Plaid.
