2024 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N track review

I'm guessing you know quite a bit about this car already.

After all, we've featured it extensively before, whether it was John Carey's initial; prototype drive, Jez Spinks' international first drive of the production version in Korea, or John Law's Aussie preview drive and suspension deep dive with chassis engineer Tim Rodgers, or even my interview with the father of the car, Albert Biermann, this is a model that has been forensically scrutinised. By us at least.

So why are we here again with yet another review of it? Well, we're going to cover how it goes on track. After all, as Biermann himself stated in our interview, “An N car is an N car and racetrack capability is the core element of an N car and we cannot play around with this.”

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He had to face down some fairly vocal opposition within Hyundai who felt that a 2.2-tonne EV was never going to be made circuit-fit. It's easy to appreciate their scepticism.

We've driven countless large SUVs of similar weight on racetracks and have come away admiring what they do but nevertheless fairly convinced that they shouldn't be doing it.

I'll preface this with a bit of a spoiler, for which I apologise. The Ioniq 5 N makes a far better road car than it does a track car. We had the opportunity to drive it on a selection of mixed roads and the initial reports from John, Jez and Johnny are spot-on.

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It's a great driver's car, with stacks of dynamic bandwidth, a refreshing element of practicality and so many set-up options that you could tinker for days with it.

The styling is on point and even that $111,000 price tag doesn't seem unreasonable. Remember, just ten years ago, if you were shopping for a sporty crossover, that much wouldn't even have bought you a 180kW diesel BMW X6. There's progress for you.

You're also reminded of how far we've come when you see a row of Ioniq 5 Ns parked in pit lane at Sydney Motorsport Park. With the boost button pressed, this thing unleashes 478kW. A McLaren F1 can only hawk up a paltry 461KW, yet there are no special driving licences required or stern instructions from the Hyundai team before our drive. Just get in and have fun.

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Okay, there was one word of warning, but it was one that painted a sneaky grin on a lot of faces.

“Please note that even with all the safety systems engaged, it'll still feel very lively out there.”

Hyundai also asked us not to set the car into its drift mode, not because they were worried we'd insert the 5 N into the scenery, but purely due to the fact that because of the recent shipping issues in the Red Sea, the Pirelli tyres required for it were in temporarily short supply. If everybody went out generating huge plumes of blue tyre smoke right from the get-go, the whole event would have been done and dusted within an hour.

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The focus of the 5 N  isn't its ability to notch a killer lap time, more its ability to have its driver laughing like an idiot. On that score at least, it's a winner.

Albert Biermann will point out that it can be set into an Endurance mode and string together two consecutive sub-8 minute laps of the Nordschleife without power de-rating, and that it can also achieve something he calls 20-20-20 (20 minutes of hot lapping on a track day, then 20 minutes on a high speed charger and then back out for 20 minutes on track again).

I'm somewhat sceptical of this claim, at least on the Pirelli P Zero rubber that the cars were on during our track test. The brief was to set off, perform one warm up lap, three fliers and then a cool-down lap. So that's about six to eight minutes of hard driving around SMP. 

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By the time the second batch of journalists had returned from their laps, chunks were already starting to peel from the tyres of the 5 Ns as the carcass had overheated and begun to delaminate the contact patch.

That's a bit of a shame, because the 5 N, otherwise performed brilliantly. Hyundai was correct in counselling a certain care when using it with all the systems on. When diving into the hairpins on a trailed brake, the tail will swing wide, but due to the long wheelbase of the 5 N, it's a lazy reaction that's intuitive to correct.

Unless you provoke the car deliberately with all of the drive sent to the rear end, it grips up well on corner exit.

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The steering is excellent, with three different user-configurable maps. Switch ESC off and put the motor into its N Sport mode and the car will allow for left foot braking if required.

The brakes are reassuringly meaty, which is a surprise. Most electric vehicles, despite their weight, are specified with underdone brakes, as regenerative braking is expected to shoulder much of the burden.

The Ioniq 5 N features meaty 400mm front discs, clamped by a hefty four-piston monobloc caliper. At the back, there's a beefy 360mm rotor. Even before the friction brakes come into play, the Ioniq 5 N can generate 0.6g of regen braking.

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Warm up lap completed, it's a prod on the wheel-mounted 'N Grin Boost' button (let's just call it NGS) and the Ioniq 5 N whooshes down the straight. It's actually rather undramatic, but then most road cars feel a bit dwarfed on a FIA-rated circuit.

The first corner gets your attention because by the time the Hyundai arrives at the braking zone it has around 220km/h showing on the track-centric head-up display, which is altogether too quick for my resolve.

The brakes chirp as I bring it down to a more manageable speed for the sweeping left-hander, which could otherwise be the scene of a horrible digger. Exit out of that, bury the throttle again and it feels as if a celestial bungee is launching you at the next challenge, a left-handed hairpin. Throw the Ioniq 5 N at this and you feel its weight.

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This is a corner that requires a certain patience, delicacy and subtlety of line, none of which I'm displaying today.

Take the attitude that you'll throw it in and deal with the consequences on the way out, initially just leads to armfuls of scrubby understeer. Hmmm. We'll come back to that one later. The high speed jinks left and right that follow are far more deftly managed by the 5 N, but anything that requires a big brake and then a serious change in direction feels a little clumsy.

It gets better when I reassign the torque for a more rearward bias. Then, you can use the rear motor's power to trim the line of the Ioniq through the tight corners. Fortunately, there are wheel-mounted N buttons where you can hot key some pre-stored setups into the 5 N.

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I'd have them set up for a fast clean lap and then another setup programmed for fully idiotic.

In this instance, the right-hand N button has been assigned to toggle the N Shift mode. This mimics the effect of a dual-clutch transmission, complete with synthetic engine noises. I'm not altogether convinced by the sound effect, as they get a little bit 'Need for Speed' in the upper registers, but there really is a lot to be said for plucking gears yourself.

I know at this point, there will be some EV haters who claim that the only way they can be involving is to pretend to be an ICE car. I understand that argument because, yes, that is exactly what the 5 N is doing here. Hyundai even recruited the same guy who finessed the i30 N's dual-clutch gearbox to get the calibration of this mode just right.

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I'm glad they made the effort. Slightly dicky audio effects aside, it's just great fun to drive in this mode.

Ping the left-hand paddle down as you approach a tight corner and you feel the drag torque of the nonexistent 'engine' come into play. Accelerate back out and through each gear you'll feel the torque building, as if the phantom engine is coming on cam. Select the next gear and it happens again.

More importantly, there's a certain audio/haptic cueing that goes on here that's hugely reassuring, especially on road. I found it more useful when driving on road, assisting me in gauging my speed. I have no doubt that, on a track at least, the 5 N is faster just left in its silent automatic mode, but is it more fun? Almost certainly not, and fun is top of the agenda with this car.

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It's instructive to watch people's faces as they get out of their stints in the Ioniq. Journos are usually a pretty reserved bunch, given to chin stroking and measured assessments.

In this case most get out of the car with grins wide enough to post a wok into. That's a measure of success, at least by Biermann's criterion.

This car has clearly been engineered by people who love driving and fetishise vehicle dynamics. The body control is uncanny for such a weighty vehicle, and the power delivery is addictive. You've got to be a car nut to include a drift optimiser, fully configurable torque distribution and launch control with three user-selectable grip settings. There are other clues too.

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The 21-inch forged alloy wheels are lower in unsprung mass than the 20-inch cast items on the rest of the Ioniq 5 range and offer a more favourably sized contact patch.

It feature deeply nerdy stuff life dual-axis hydro bushings for the motor.

Who cares that it does 0-100km/h in 3.4 seconds or that the only options are a $2000 glass roof (don't) or $1000 matte paint (also don't; it'll delay your delivery and ruin your day when a bird poops on it)? The Ioniq 5 N is a car for drivers.

It's at its best on road, but it's great fun for a few laps on a track, more of a time attack weapon than something that'll metronomically hit a time for lap after lap.

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Tim Rodgers chuckles as he calls it a 'supercar hunter' and I can see why that would be a lot of fun, tailing a Porsche or a Ferrari out of pit lane and getting a grandstand view of them trying to shake off a family hauler.

Mission accomplished then? Yes, albeit with a caveat that you'll need to watch your tyres. Hyundai has built a bit of a monster here. Its mantra can be summed up in three words at the end of an email between Albert Biermann and his team of development engineers.

“Driving still matters.”