Photo: Porsche
The Porsche Taycan has set the first all-electric lap record at The Bend Motorsport Park, a 4.8-mile circuit in South Australia. It set a lap time of 3 minutes and 30.344 seconds, just eight seconds short of the outright production car lap record, which was set by the new Porsche 911 Turbo on the same day.
The Bend is a regular destination for motorsport competitions around the world, including the Asian Le Mans series and Australia’s Supercars Championship. It’s also licensed for motorcycle racing. It was opened at the start of 2018, so it’s not yet had the global recognition that it perhaps deserves.
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Porsche, however, has had its eyes on The Bend from the start. In 2018, the automaker set a lap record at the 35-corner circuit in the 911 GT2 RS — a car that, at the time, also held the production car record at the more famous Nürburgring Nordschleife circuit in Germany.
The new 911 Turbo was two seconds faster than the GT2 RS, a mean feat given the latter was about as close to race spec as a production car can get. But that the all-electric Taycan came within six seconds of that old record is perhaps even more impressive.
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“The lap time of the Taycan just absolutely blew me away,” said Luke Youlden, a former winner of the Bathurst 1000. “You drive it in a similar way to any other Porsche sports car. The turn-in, handling and acceleration were outstanding. The power out of the corners is definitely where it makes up a lot of time.”
Youlden added that while the Taycan is heavier because of the batteries, those batteries are so close to the ground that the low center of gravity nearly makes up for the deficit via excellent handling and braking. Perhaps even more notable was that Porsche put the Taycan through repeated high-performance launches and on-track demonstrations for journalists in hot weather conditions, something other high-performance EVs can struggle to handle.
Kurt Verlin was born in France and lives in the United States. Throughout his life he was always told French was the language of romance, but it was English he fell in love with. He likes cats, music, cars, 30 Rock, Formula 1, and pretending to be a race car driver in simulators; but most of all, he just likes to write about it all. See more articles by Kurt.
