Koenigsegg's Jesko Absolut has just thrown down a new statement run in one of the most hardcore hypercar feats of acceleration and braking, blasting from a dead stop to 400 kilometers an hour (248 mph) and back to a standstill in just 25.21 seconds. This factory-backed effort nudged the bar a fraction ahead of Rimac's recent Nevera R-based assault on the same record. What's arguably most impressive though, is just how differently these two road-going weapons manage the feat... and, to a certain extent, that the Jesko Absolut is in this conversation at all.
On paper, the margin we're talking about is quite small. The Jesko Absolut's 0-400-0 km/h time of 25.21s beats the Nevera R (25.79s) by a little over half a second. The story behind those figures is wildly asymmetric though — because in theory, it should be nearly impossible for the Swede to beat the Nevera R despite the latter weighing over two tons.
After all, the Croatian car leverages four motors to make a combined 2107 horsepower and 1726 lb-ft of torque. That might sound like an impossible amount of power to control, but Rimac manages it through clever engineering and putting that power down through four tires. The Koenigsegg has equally impressive engineering, but it's missing some big advantages that Rimac has. First, it leverages a twin-turbo V8, not hyper-responsive electric motors; second, it routes all of its 1600 horsepower through the rear tires.
Despite that grip and power deficit, the Jesko Absolut is the new king of 0-400-0 racing. "The control we have today equals the control that electric cars have over their motor," says Christian von Koenigsegg. "Our software engineers have been tweaking and adjusting the Lightspeed transmission software, and also introduced a torque control system in the car that reduces the need for traction control intervention."
The software is what Koenigsegg calls Maximum Absolut Overdrive, and it's the key to this new record. The automaker says it'll roll the feature out to customer cars in the future so that all Jesko owners can benefit from it. Racelogic equipment and data confirmed the figures, including a new 0-250-0 mph record of 25.67 seconds. Given that, it stands to reason that if Koenigsegg had focused solely on the 400 km/h (248 mph) record, it could potentially have been even quicker.
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