This paper explores the design of an ultra light-weight power and torque dense motor to enhance the performance of a light-weight electric racing vehicle. Such a racing vehicle is to compete in formula student racing events. The state-of-the-art powertrain in these vehicles are axial-field machines or medium speed radial-field machines with a gear. This paper concerns a high speed traction machine radial-field design that closely considers the endurance duty-cycle and/or driving cycle of a race car and provides fast acceleration. The proposed electrical machine is designed to be ultra-light-weight. Therefore, an 18,000 rpm (single gear), 24 slot, 4 pole and 33 Nm brushless highly saturated permanent magnet machine is designed, with an active mass of around 3.0 kg (-10kWlkg and 10 Nmlkg). To account for the various race events, the velocity of the racing tracks is to be closely matched with the machine output characteristics. Within this paper, the design and no-load results will be presented. In the near future (Q2 of 2015), following extended tests, this machine (integrated with a specifically designed single-stage gear) will be used to drive the vehicle using torque vectoring on all four-wheels. We expect that this will result in a significant performance gain in acceleration, endurance and handling characteristics of the 2015 University Racing Eindhoven race vehicle.