While lap records are all well and good, many suffer for a lack of context. While we can all marvel at onboards or attempt to make comparisons, there’s nothing like a benchmark time to double down on a sense of achievement. Which, handily, is exactly what’s available to Porsche with its Taycan Turbo GT’s latest conquest. It has claimed not just the production EV lap record at Interlagos – it has 1100hp, so of course it has – but the overall production car record as well, beating two other Porsches in the process.
1:42.13 is the new fastest time, which even the briefest bit of Wikipedia scrawling will show is flipping quick: ahead of the TCR, N-GT and Ferrari Challenge records at the Brazilian GP track. But pitched against similar Porsches is what makes the Turbo GT look even more impressive; not only did it surpass an original 760hp Turbo S by almost eight seconds (it recorded 1:49.8 in 2022), this Taycan is also able to lap Interlagos faster than a 911 Turbo S. And that’s really motoring. Porsche says that 1:43.087 was prior to the old Taycan lap, so perhaps not the latest and greatest, though clearly a very rapid sports car. That a two-tonne EV has now bested…
Brazilian Felipe Nasr, the Porsche factory WEC driver, piloted the Taycan around the São Paulo track. He reported: “Coming to Interlagos and getting behind the wheel of the Taycan Turbo GT right after winning the 24 Hours of Daytona was an incredible experience. I expected the strong acceleration and brutal torque but, ultimately, it was the overall performance that really impressed me.” The video is another of those bizarre EV onboards, where the sheer silliness of the speeds is completely at odds with the hush that characterises the rest of the experience. There’s some tyre squeal, some correction to be made, some whirr from the Electric Sport Sound, but it’s eerily undramatic for a car that peaks at 169mph.
The lap was part of Porsche’s promotion for the wider Taycan range, which is about to launch in Brazil. As for the Turbo GT, that’s four lap records on four continents now, Interlagos going alongside 7:07.55 at the Nurburgring, 1:27.87 at Laguna Seca and 2:11.28 at Shanghai. Just Africa is left by our reckoning – bring on that Kyalami record later in 2025.