A Tesla Model 3 Performance has made the podium in its first race with track mode at a Global Time Attack Super Lap event in Buttonwillow, but the vehicle was somehow disqualified for ‘being electric’.

Cameron Rogers is becoming the defacto Model 3 racing expert.

We previously reported on him racing a standard Model 3 RWD with and without mods at Laguna race track and he did a record lap at the track with his new Model 3 Performance in September.

This weekend, he took his car to the Buttonwillow track for the Global Time Attack Super Lap event.

After a suspension performance upgrade from Mountain Pass Performance, they set out to be first in class in the AWD street tire class.

The new track mode, which Tesla released last week, turned out to be really important since the new race-oriented cooling system enabled them to do many runs and get used to the track without going into a low-power mode to cool the powertrain.

Rogers managed a 2:00.78 time, which was good enough for second-in-class, and the car actually got the best time with a 1:59.12 when driven by Sasha Anis from Mountain Pass Performance – though he wasn’t officially competing with the car.

Nonetheless, Rogers made the podium with the Model 3 Performance, but his time was contested by a defeated competitor because and I quote: “electricity is not listed as an approved fuel.”

He was actually taken off the podium during the ceremony as you can see at around 16:00 in the video they did for the event:

You can also see one of the laps that Rogers did in the Model 3 Performance here:

Electrek’s Take

Obviously, it’s not that big of a deal and if anything, it’s funnier than anything else. Everyone except the guy who contested knows that he lost and all it did is give Rogers the opportunity to say you can’t stop the future on stage, which was pretty cool.

As for track mode, I find interesting that the improved cooling for racing is actually the track mode feature that they found most useful.

I look forward to bringing my own Model 3 Performance to the race track after receiving the track mode update. If you have any suggestion in or around Quebec, please let me know.

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