A tri-motor Tesla sedan with 1,020 horsepower, forged wheels, spherical bushings, and a Romanian hillclimb champion behind the wheel. That’s the story Unplugged Performance and Dominic Marcu have been writing together since 2021, and it’s been consistently winning.
The Model S Plaid as a Performance Baseline
Before any modifications, the Tesla Model S Plaid is already a genuinely absurd machine. Three electric motors, all-wheel drive, and a claimed 0-60 mph (0-96 km/h) time of 1.99 seconds make it one of the fastest-accelerating production cars ever built. The quarter mile falls in under 9.3 seconds. Top speed is rated at 200 mph (322 km/h). It weighs over 4,800 lbs (2,177 kg) and still pulls harder off the line than most dedicated sports cars.
What makes those numbers even more remarkable is the context. This isn’t a stripped-out track special or a purpose-built drag car. The Model S Plaid is a full-size luxury sedan with rear seats, a frunk, and a touchscreen. It will do the school run on Monday and run a 9-second quarter mile on Saturday. The 1,020 hp comes from three motors: one at the front axle and two at the rear, all working together through Tesla’s torque vectoring logic to put power down with a precision that a traditional combustion drivetrain simply can’t match. There’s no clutch slip, no turbo lag, no gear change interrupting the pull. From a standing start, the force is instant and it stays instant all the way through the rev range, because electric motors don’t have one.
Tesla’s Tri-Motor All-Wheel Drive setup also means traction is distributed between axles in milliseconds, faster than any mechanical differential can react. On a dry drag strip that translates to those absurd 0-60 mph (0-96 km/h) times. On a wet or variable surface, it means the car can find grip that a rear-biased setup would simply spin away. For hillclimb, where surface conditions shift from run to run and from corner to corner, that underlying platform intelligence is a genuine competitive asset.
That said, raw power is only part of the story. Hillclimb stages at Sinaia, Râșnov, Transalpina, and Reșița are real mountain roads with tight switchbacks, elevation changes, changing grip levels, and walls that don’t forgive mistakes. Power gets you up the straight sections. Everything else, the rotation in corners, the stability under heavy braking, the consistency across multiple runs as temps shift, that’s where a stock sedan runs out of answers.
That’s exactly the gap Unplugged Performance was built to close.
What Unplugged Performance Actually Changed
Unplugged Performance has been supplying Dominic’s program with hardware across four core areas, and none of it is cosmetic. But to understand what they bring to a hillclimb build, it helps to look at what they’ve already proven on the world’s most famous hillclimb course.
At the 2023 101st Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, Unplugged Performance entered its Model S Plaid “Dark Helmet” with veteran driver Randy Pobst behind the wheel. The car completed the 12.42-mile (19.98 km) course, climbing from 9,395 ft (2,864 m) to 14,115 ft (4,302 m) across more than 156 turns, in 9:54.901. That’s a sub-10-minute run, a new record for modified production EVs, a top-10 finish overall out of 66 drivers, and second place in class. The key detail: Dark Helmet ran a factory powertrain. No power modifications. Everything Unplugged Performance did was chassis, suspension, brakes, wheels, and aero. That result is the proof of concept behind every part they supply to Dominic’s program.
The suspension and alignment work centers on precision springs, dampers, and adjustable camber solutions that give the setup range a street-born EV simply doesn’t have from the factory. At Pikes Peak, UP ran UP x Ohlins TTX 4-way coilovers alongside billet aluminum adjustable control arms to manage the transition between the high-speed lower section and the notoriously rough, Baja-like conditions of the upper mountain. The team was up until 1am between practice days swapping front springs to balance the car, and it paid off. The Model S Plaid’s air suspension is comfortable and competent on public roads, but for competitive hillclimb you need a setup range the stock system simply can’t offer. On Dominic’s car, that same philosophy applies to every Romanian mountain stage he runs.
Chassis precision comes from spherical bushings replacing the OEM rubber units throughout the suspension. Rubber bushings deflect under load. That deflection introduces vagueness in steering feel and causes the geometry to shift in ways the driver can’t predict or compensate for in real time. Spherical units eliminate that slop. The geometry you set in the paddock is the geometry the car runs on course, lap after lap.
The wheel and tire package is built around UP-03 Pikes Peak Spec forged wheels, motorsport-rated and engineered for the fitment required by competitive hillclimb. At Pikes Peak, Dark Helmet ran UP forged wheels wrapped in Yokohama A005 Biomass tires, and Pobst specifically credited the wheel-and-tire combination as a key factor in the record. Lighter rotational mass means faster direction changes and reduced load on the wheel bearings and hubs under the sustained cornering forces a mountain stage produces. They also accept tire sizes that actually give you grip on a tighter radius at altitude, without the clearance or steering-lock compromises that come with adapting non-purpose-built wheels.
Functional aero rounds out the package: splitters, lips, and diffusers designed for real-world hillclimb speeds. At Pikes Peak, UP also ran a Superlight Carbon Ceramic Big Brake Kit (BBK) with a Carbon Fiber Brake Cooling Duct Kit because, at 14,115 ft (4,302 m) of altitude and 156 corners between you and the finish, brake consistency isn’t optional. The same logic applies to Transalpina or Sinaia. Aero that works keeps the front end planted when the road opens up and speeds climb past 100 mph (160 km/h). Brakes that don’t fade keep the car predictable at every corner entry, not just the first few. A driver who trusts both can attack a stage on the final run the same way they attacked it on the first, and that consistency is ultimately what separates a good time from a winning one.
Hillclimb Is a Harder Problem Than It Looks
Hillclimb stages eliminate the safety net that closed circuit racing provides. There’s no run-off. The surface changes between runs. Grip evolves as the day heats up and as rubber gets laid down. Every driver gets a handful of timed passes and there’s no coming back from a mistake that puts two wheels over a barrier.
The discipline also punishes inconsistency harshly. A car that posts a competitive time on one run but degrades on the second, because brake temperatures climbed, or because tire pressure crept up, or because geometry shifted under load, will lose to a slower but more repeatable setup. That argument for repeatability is at the core of what Unplugged Performance brings to competition. Their philosophy, proven at Pikes Peak in 2023 and reinforced across multiple seasons of European hillclimb, is that boring parts win weekends. Get the geometry right, keep it right, and let the driver focus on driving.
Dominic Marcu’s Career in the CNVC
Since 2021, Dominic Marcu has been the most visible EV competitor in Romania’s CNVC (National Coastal Speed Championship). He’s raced iconic Romanian stages including Sinaia, often compared to Monte Carlo for its street course character, the elevation and rhythm of Transalpina, and the technical challenges of Râșnov and Reșița.
Over that span, he’s accumulated category wins, podiums, and EV firsts that the country’s motorsport press stopped treating as novelties and started covering as straight results. That shift matters. When journalists who didn’t follow electric vehicles start asking about lap times and setup choices rather than range and charging, you’ve changed how people perceive the technology. Dominic’s results did that.
The crowds noticed too. Kids leaned over the barriers at his runs. Families made a day of it specifically to watch the EV. Sustainable motorsport went from a concept to something people cheered for.
What Comes Next
Dominic is transitioning to the Tesla Model 3 Performance for his next competitive chapter, and the logic is sound. The Model S Plaid answered the power question definitively. An electric family sedan pushing nearly 100 mph (160 km/h) through a mountain stage while carrying over 4,800 lbs (2,177 kg) of curb weight can be terrifyingly quick and still carve a road with precision. That case has been made. The next question is about agility, and the Model 3 Performance is a lighter, more nimble platform that asks for a different kind of driving.
Unplugged Performance is building the new car around the same foundation: ride control, alignment hardware, forged wheels, and functional aero. The same iterative loop that built the Plaid campaign into a winning program, build, test, learn, refine, repeat, applies directly to the new platform.
Four seasons of hillclimb competition at the front of the CNVC field prove that the combination works. Dominic brings the seat time and the feedback. Unplugged Performance brings hardware that actually responds to that feedback. The result is a competitive Tesla that keeps getting faster. That’s not a coincidence; it’s a process that’s been running since 2021. We are looking forward to seeing Dominic Marcu’s car at the upcoming hill climb events across Europe, and potentially, at xTakeover, one of the largest Tesla enthusiast gatherings in Europe. In the meantime, grab a detailed look at Dominic Marcu’s Model S Plaid hill climb race car in the media gallery below.
