WE KNEW THAT the Porsche 919 Hybrid Evo could do it, but we did expect it to do it quite like this.

German racer, Timo Bernhard lapped the 20.832 kilometre (12.94 miles) Nürburgring Nordschleife race circuit in a blistering 5 minutes and 19.55 seconds. That’s an average speed of 233.8 km/h (145.3 mph) on what is revered by race drivers, engineers and enthusiasts alike as the world’s most difficult track.

Driving the Porsche 919 Hybrid Evo, Bernhard beat the previous lap record, set by Stefan Bellof.

In 1983, at the Nurburgring 1000km sports car race, German driver Stefan Bellof drove a powerful 620hp Rothmans Porsche 956 C and set a ’Ring lap record of 6 minutes 11.13 seconds, at an average speed of more than 200km/h.

This mean Bernhard beat Stefan Bellof’s lap record by 51.58 seconds.

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This is now the second track record for the Porsche 919 Hybrid Evo. In April of this year,  in Spa in Belgium, Neel Jani the 34-year old Porsche works driver from Switzerland – Le Mans outright winner and Endurance World Champion of 2016 – set a lap of 1:41.770 minutes on the 7.004 kilometre (4.35 mile) Grand Prix circuit.

This topped the previous track record set by Lewis Hamilton in 2017 qualifying. Hamilton’s time was 1:42.553 minutes meaning Jani broke his record by 0.783 seconds.

The Evo version of the Porsche 919 Hybrid is based on the car that took outright victory at the Le Mans 24 Hours and won the FIA World Endurance Championship in 2015, 2016 and 2017.

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With the brand’s departure from Le Mans and the World Endurance Championship, Porsche’s engineers decided to see how fast they could make the car go, when it wasn’t subject to the strictures of the Le Mans and WEC rules.

Thus, its hybrid powertrain now develops a system output of 1,160hp. The Evo weighs only 849 kilograms and its modified (and now active) aerodynamics generate over 50 per cent more downforce compared to the WEC model. Top speed at the Nürburgring was 369.4 km/h (229.5 mph).

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