Drag race: Porsche Taycan Turbo GT vs Ferrari SF90 vs Yamaha R1M

It’s an interesting drag race today, as we’ve lined up three vehicles on the Carwow drag strip which bear very little resemblance but which can come within a whisker of each other over the standing quarter mile.

We’ve got a brand-new electric car in the form of the ballistic Porsche Taycan Turbo GT – a range-topper introduced with the Taycan’s mid-life facelift in 2024. It’s lining up against one of the best hybrid supercars ever made, the Ferrari SF90, as well as a legendary superbike which can offer performance to rival either of these cars but at a fraction of the price – the Yamaha R1M. But which one will take the win? Let’s look at the stats first.

Porsche Taycan Turbo GT

The Taycan Turbo GT sits above the Taycan Turbo S in Porsche’s range, and it’s by some measure the most powerful road car Porsche has ever built. It has two electric motors, one on each axle to provide four-wheel drive.

Power in normal mode is 789hp, but during Launch mode – which Mat’s using for our drag race – it’s boosted to a whopping 1,034hp. There’s also a massive 1,240Nm of torque. The Taycan Turbo GT weighs in at 2,365kg, giving it 437 horsepower per ton of weight, and it costs from £186,300.

Ferrari SF90

Flying the flag for hybrid supercars is the Ferrari SF90, a car that’s featured in quite a few Carwow drag races now – and always impresses with its pace. It uses a 4.0-litre, twin-turbocharged V8 engine with a total of three electric motors – one in the drivetrain, and two more driving the front axle to provide AWD.

Total power output comes in at 1,000hp and 800Nm of torque, sent to the road through an eight-speed dual-clutch gearbox. Ferrari quotes a weight of 1,570kg, though this is without fluids making it closer to 1,670kg on the road – that means a power/weight ratio of 599hp/ton. It’ll cost you from £376,048 in the UK.

Yamaha R1M

Now to the dark horse of the drag strip – the Yamaha R1M superbike. Powered by a 1.0-litre four-stroke engine, it puts out 200hp and 113Nm of torque to the rear-wheel through a six-speed constant-mesh gearbox.

Those may not sound like particularly impressive numbers, but remember that the R1M weighs just 202kg without the rider – so its power/weight ratio is a massive 990hp/ton. It’s also a fraction of the price of the other two vehicles here, coming in at just £24,666. However, you can’t just put your foot down and go – launching a superbike takes quite a lot of skill. Let’s find out if our rider has what it takes to beat these two four-wheelers…

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