VIDEO: X-Men’s Nicholas Hoult battles the Jaguar XF AWD in the ‘Smart Cone’ driving challenge

Yup, that’s Nicholas Hoult, the guy that plays Beast in the X-Men series and who starred in Mad Max. The British actor’s new film Collide; which also features Felicity Jones, Anthony Hopkins and Ben Kingsley; is hitting cinemas in Europe now.

Here, he takes some time off to battle a Jaguar XF AWD in the Smart Cone challenge after Formula 1 driver Romain Grosjean set the score to beat earlier this year. Hoult should be rather familiar with the latest XF, as that’s his ride in Collide. The F-Type also appears in the movie as the car of Kingsley’s character.

For the Smart Cone challenge, Nicholas put the XF AWD R-Sport through its paces around a course situated in the beautiful backdrop of rural Sardinia, where the Art of Performance Tour visited last month. The course was built on a low-grip sandy surface, pushing both the man and the car’s AWD to the limit.

The Smart Cone course uses wireless technology to randomly illuminate pairs of cones to set out a different route each time. With millions of different potential options taking place in real time, the technology provides a unique test of driving skill, precision and reactions. Sounds challenging and fun.

“I’ve loved getting behind the wheel of the new Jaguar XF AWD R-Sport. Driving scenes in films can be a challenge – everyone expects you to be a superstar even behind the wheel and I’m definitely not a pro driver – so it’s good to be able to put my skills to the test in a safe environment,” Hoult said.

“The XF AWD R-Sport is great – it does a lot of the work for you. I was driving on a particularly challenging surface with lots of sand and dust but the car just gripped and performed. It was really fun to be able to compare driving the car here to some of my driving experiences when filming and hopefully I’ve done myself justice!” the actor added.

By the way, he scored 42,000. Good but it’s impossible to beat Grosjean’s F1 driver reaction score of 49,032 points.

The new AWD option is available for the 2.0D 180 AWD R-Sport variant of Jag’s BMW 5 Series and Mercedes E-Class rival, bringing the brand’s Intelligent Driving Dynamics system (shared by the F-Type AWD) to the normally rear-driven saloon. With the ability to transfer torque to the front axle when it senses a loss of traction, it provides additional surefootedness to the equation.

The second-generation XF was launched here in April. We get the Jag with a 2.0 litre turbo engine offering 240 PS and 340 Nm, mated to an eight-speed automatic. Two trim levels are available – Prestige and R-Sport. No AWD, of course. Find out more in our launch report.

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