The engineers also later found sensor issues that let the battery get hotter than it should have, the spokesperson told Jalopnik.

“The team spotted an accidental disconnection of one of the outdoor temperature sensors from the air conditioning system, which caused the air conditioning system to not send cold air to the battery and other systems when needed,” the spokesperson said.

Fine, fine, so the thing can drift. What about the batteries?

At full speed, each lap of the 1.5-mile circuit burned up about nine miles of battery range during our testing. Lime Rock Park has just installed a passel of 240V Level 2 Tesla chargers at its facility—not Superchargers, but the kind of residential charger that will fill your Tesla's battery from dead in about six to eight hours. So, having plugged in overnight and immediately hit the track with a full 310 miles of range, we could have run just over 30 full-speed laps before needing to unspool the extension cord. Right?

Not exactly. Heat buildup is inevitable. After three or four laps at absolute tire-torturing full speed, the car begins to reduce power output. It's a balanced, gradual event. The motors and battery use cooling circuits that are independent but linked; as one component heats up, the system shifts cooling capacity where it's needed. It can even use the battery as a heat sink to shed excess thermal load from the motors.

This linked approach to thermal management means that, unlike previous Teslas, track driving won't lead to a total performance shutdown when one component's temperature spikes. Battery and motors heat up at the same rate; when the car starts approaching its thermal limits, it dials back power gradually, until the heat output can be managed by the car's cooling capability.

And you can keep lapping through it. The car's power output plateaus, the cooling system reaches a steady state. You're more than welcome to continue in this condition until you've drained the batteries. You'll miss some of the hard punch of acceleration coming out of the corners, but you end up driving it like a momentum car. It's still a ton of fun.

Moravy told me that, before we arrived at Lime Rock Park, his team had run simulations to see how Track Mode would perform at this particular circuit. The data predicted that, after roughly three full-speed, perfect laps, the car would gradually start pulling power, hitting equilibrium at a pace about two to three seconds off the absolute quickest lap times the car is capable of. To him, that's not a devastating loss of performance. "Two, three seconds, that's equivalent to driver error," he points out.

Our experience matched his predictions. After three or four laps, the hard slap of the Performance Model 3's acceleration slowly began to dissipate. It was always gradual, workable, not a sudden loss or change of performance. A few cooldown laps—or 20 minutes parked in the pits while we ran our backup car—and the thing would bounce right back to full power, no drama involved.

Is this a limitation? Sure. But it's one we've experienced in plenty of internal-combustion cars. At our Performance Car of the Year testing last year in summertime heat, our particular Honda Civic Type R could only hold on for two laps of NCM Motorsports Park before overheating and going into limp-home mode. An Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio that our man Sam Smith tested at Gingerman Raceway fell on its face on its first full-speed lap, multiple times. (Alfa Romeo later explained that the car we tested was missing some crucial software updates.) A new Mustang GT with Performance Package 2 will start to overheat its differential after a handful of laps at a typical circuit. Ford figures if you wanted a track car, you'd have gone with the GT350. And remember the well-documented track day overheating problems of the Corvette Z06?

Driving on a race track at speed puts huge demands on any car. Handled unsympathetically, even the most track-focused production machine will boil its brake fluid or spike its temp gauges. In our testing, we found the Model 3 Performance to be a joy around the track. It's a tossable delight, even under limited power. And while the rationing of horsepower might be frustrating, it ensures that, as long as all cooling systems are working normally, you'll never fry the car's circuitry, no matter how hard you drive it.

There are, of course, drawbacks. After an entire morning of track laps and hooning around Lime Rock's autocross and skidpad, our two Model 3s each had less than 40 miles of battery range left. Making the 110-mile drive back to my home in Brooklyn, NY meant plugging into one of Lime Rock's chargers for an hour while I grabbed lunch, then pit stopping at the first Supercharger on my route home. The situation was never dire, but it required a bit more forward planning than simply GPSing the nearest gas station.

And I get it: Nobody outside the car magazine business is going to bring two cars to a track day and hot-swap drivers to keep lapping. Especially not when they cost $78,000 each, as happens when you order a $64,000 Performance Dual Motor Model 3 with the $5000 Performance Upgrade, $5000 Enhanced Autopilot, and the ritziest paint and interior options.

Let's be honest. This isn't a "track car." It's not meant to compete with the Camaro ZL1 1LE, Mustang Shelby GT350R or the dearly-departed Dodge Viper ACR. If you're buying a four-door sedan, even a righteously quick one, you're probably not planning on chasing apexes and torturing tires with it every weekend.

In that context, the Tesla Model 3 Performance does a realistic job of delivering impressive numbers and unbeatable feel. It's quick, it's tossable, and unlike everything your garage buddies told you, it won't melt at the mere whisper of a full-speed lap. It's a compelling argument for feelsome, charming electric cars. No surprise, given who built it: Neumeyer's garage includes a BMW 2002 and a Porsche 912, while Moravy wrenches on vintage Volvos in his off time.

What they've created along with the entire Tesla team is the world's first electric sport sedan with bona fide race track chops. That's important for electric car technology, for motorsports culture, and for the future of the automotive hobby as a whole.