Yahoo Autos 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N Track Day
From the September/October issue of Car and Driver.
To assess whether EVs are ready for prime time, we've taken them on 1000-mile trips and driven them far off the beaten path. The result is always affected by charging infrastructure. EVs are not for everyone. Some aren't even available in every state. But they are chipping away at market share, one ion at a time. Now that we've crowned a performance-focused EV of the Year, we wanted to know whether an enthusiast in a regular place (i.e., not the center of the EV world, more commonly called California) could drive to a track day and enjoy themselves.
The short answer is: It depends. As with any other trip you plan to take in an electric vehicle, 10 minutes of research helps ensure success.
We departed Ann Arbor the night before our track day at Grattan Raceway in Belding, Michigan, mostly because we needed to be there early to capture photography. The drive is 134 miles from office door to hotel door. The Ioniq 5 N has plenty of range to get there, but we needed to use DC charging at our destination so we could have the battery at 100 percent before heading for the track. That's because we didn't take our own planning advice; the hotel had no EV charging.
After a 26-mile drive to the track and taking care of some photo needs, we started lapping with 81 percent left in the pack. After 15 minutes (nine laps of the 1.9-mile circuit), the battery was at 38 percent. That's nearly 3 percent per minute, which means that in track driving, the battery discharges at about the same rate it charges on the most powerful equipment.
To mimic what most drivers will initially do, we ran the 5 N in Track mode, which conditions the battery for sustained lapping (Sprint mode optimizes all-out power over range), and cranked all the settings (steering, chassis, accelerator response) to max. No manual shifting. No extra noises.
You could spend a whole day trying to figure out your ideal combination of modes, settings, and features, but the discharge rate meant we didn't have that kind of time since there was nowhere to charge at the track.
Aside from the dilemma of "which YouTube video do I watch to help me decide which mode to run?", the Ioniq was great on track. Brake feel isn't great; it's a bit of a lifeless pedal in terms of limit feedback, though confidence definitely grew thorough the session and with enough of the watchdogs leashed or kenneled, you can even drive off the corner with a bit of yaw, should you prefer to burn through some tires.
To make a smoke screen, disable all stability control and crank the torque bias as rear as it'll go. You can't do a typical burnout holding the brakes, and the 5 N has so much grip that flat-footing the accelerator makes not a puff. Instead, crank the wheel to full lock and put your foot in it. After about 90 degrees of turning, the rear comes around—resist the urge to gently apply brake to keep it in one spot. Applying any left pedal might as well be a director calling cut. But be warned: Don't do this for too long. The tires get spinning very fast and cords will peak through after less antics than expected.
During lunch, we took the Ioniq 5 N off-site to a DC charger that unfortunately didn't charge at its advertised rate (shocker), which would have made a second track session feasible. If there were a 125-kW charger at Grattan, we could have run all day in a typical track-day schedule.
WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca has Tesla Superchargers, so there's at least one track where a day of EV lapping is possible, and the Ioniq 5 N can participate once Hyundai has access to Musk's network. So, while the car can theoretically complete a track day, lapping and charging in 20-minute alternating intervals for as long as the track is hot, it's the infrastructure that held us back. Until the charging infrastructure expands, Middle America will have to continue burning gas on track.
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