Two weeks ago, we went to the Team O’Neil Rally School with our Ace Performance Project Tesla. We went there to see if the modified Model 3 will rally and would our modifications make it better.
The short answers are: yes and yes
Our electric hooptie was driven by Team O’Neil’s Wyatt Knox, who is a past national rally champ in the 2WD class but probably best known for his videos on the Team O’Neil Rally channel. As you’ll soon find out, we were off to a rough start but then things took a turn for the better. I won’t spoil anything, but you’ll be able to see the full Will It Rally? video on February 6, 2025 at 12:00pm Eastern time.
Posted here are some random videos that I took while there. Think of it as a behind-the-scenes look at how this video series is made.
As a reminder, this is the list of our modifications:
- Falken Wildpeak A/T Trail tires in 235/50-18 (street)
- Nokian Hakkapeliitta studded winter tire in 235/45-18 (snow)
- Mountain Pass Performance 1.75-inch lift kit
- Mountain Pass Performance Arastradero Rear Upper Camber Arms
- Mountain Pass Performance “Smash Me” front skid plate
- Mountain Pass Performance Partybox for Tesla Model 3
This first is of ride along with Wyatt driving. What this video cannot tell you is how smooth of a driver Wyatt is. Yes, I was thrown around a bit, and you can gear me giggling, but the transitions were very smooth. And smooth is fast. Later, not shown in the video, Wyatt switched with another driver, Baer Connard of Ace Performance. Now Baer is a seasoned driver with a ton of performance driving experience and coaching. But one lap with him at the wheel and I was ready to regurgitate my lunch – not smooth and slower. Dude needs more practice laps.
New to the Will It Rally? series are chase scenes. In these two videos, my unprofessionally captured video shows us chasing a our Tesla Model 3 (above) and an Audi A6 TDi (below, which was awesome!) in a Subaru WRX rally car (rally suspension, brakes, full cage, snow tires). The WRX was also driven by a professional rally driver. As you can see, it had a hard time keeping up.
Some things to note:
- You can clearly see that the Partybox from Mountain Pass Performance allows the traction and stability control systems to be completely disabled.
- This allows a good driver unrestricted throttle control, no automatic breaking, and allows for drifting/skidding. ABS was working as normal.
- Both cars are going full blast through one of the school’s rally courses. All the video you’ll see from it will done that way, no movie magic or speeding up.
- Yes, our Subaru did spin out.
- Yes, the Subaru had trouble keeping up with the modified Tesla.
- There are some sharp corners in this course, as well as a few fast straights.
- Note Tesla’s traction and power out of these turns and up the hills.
- There is a skid pad where a slalom course was set up, as you can tell by cones in the first video.
- The video does not give a good interpretation of the course elevation changes, which are really quite dramatic. You can see a bit of that where the WRX is on the bottom of the hill, waiting for the Tesla to come down.
Disclaimer: The CEO of Tesla is currently heavily involved in politics. We will not speak of him, any politics, or his actions here. This post and these videos are about a very popular vehicle, the modifications we made to it, and how it performed. -KK