The Porsche 918 Spyder has been on our radars for some time now, but it has finally arrived at the Frankfurt International Motor Show in its final production guise. Porsche used the hypercar’s auspicious arrival to announce that the 918 Spyder is the quickest lapping car with global road homologation to ever go around the Nürburgring Nordschleife. The Porsche factory racer behind the record-setting lap, Marc Lieb, has also said he believes the hybrid hypercar could have gone even faster.
The record was set on the 4th of September, in a time of 6 minutes 57 seconds around the 20.6 km circuit, which is a massive 14 seconds quicker than the previous road car record of 7 minutes and 11 seconds established by the Gumpert Apollo Sport and equates to an average speed of more than 179.5 km/h. The track-only Ferrari 599XX can lap the track in an identical time and that’s with the assistance of racing slicks. Lieb believes, “there is more potential in the car,” and the fact that the test car was on street-legal rubber makes the 918 Spyder’s time all the more impressive.
The hypercar successor to the Porsche Carrera GT, the Porsche 918 Spyder gets a mid-mounted 4.6 litre V8, race-derived, engine that produces 447 kW. This is then coupled to a pair of electric motors on each axle that can assist with a further 205 kW. In ‘e-Power’ mode the electric motors can provide 32 km of unassisted EV power, while still getting the car to 100 km/h in 7 seconds and onto a top speed of 150 km/h. Porsche claim the 918 Spyder’s official fuel economy figure on a combined cycle is 3.3 L/100 km. The hi-tech Porsche also offers ‘Hybrid’ mode, ‘Sport Hybrid’ and ‘Race Hybrid’ modes which deliver varying degrees of ferocity from the electric motors.
Courtesy of this hi-tech hybrid setup, the Porsche 918 Spyder’s performance figures are off the scale: it will do 0 – 100 km/h in 2.8 seconds, 0 – 200 km/h in 7.7 seconds and 0 – 300 km/h in 22 seconds on the way to its top speed of 345 km/h. The 918 Spyder test car that set the lap record was equipped with something Porsche like to call the ‘Weissach package.’ This enhances the track dynamics of the car with a few extra aerodynamic bits, an active rear-wheel steering system and a cool Martini livery. The standard Michelin tyres developed specifically for the 918 Spyder were fitted to the record-setting vehicle.
This raises the question though; just how fast could the Porsche 918 Spyder go with slick or semi-slick racing tyres? Well, unsubstantiated rumours say that Porsche have lapped the 918 Spyder on such rubber and the time was 6 minutes and 48 seconds, equalling the track day special Radical SR8 LM. For now, that puts the Porsche 918 Spyder ahead of its fiercest rivals: the McLaren P1, which has only done 7 minutes and 4 seconds, and LaFerrari which has rarely left the Fiorano test track.
Can you believe Porsche built as many as 1 270 Porsche Carrera GTs last decade? By comparison to their previous hypercar, they’ll build exactly 918 examples of the 918 Spyder, a figure which far outstrips the 375 McLaren P1s and 499 LaFerraris.
