Porsche Motorsport may have withdrawn from the World Endurance Championship but it isn’t ready to park its 919 racecars just yet.

Members of the Le Mans-winning team let the successful 919 racer of its leash to show exactly how quick it really is. Without any restrictions the 2,0-litre V4 engine makes over 530 kW and the hybrid system has been tuned to deliver an additional 30 kW.

The power increase along with some aero tweaks helped the 919 lap the famous 7,0 km Spa-Francorchamps circuit in 1 min 41,770 some 12 seconds quicker than the quickest time achieved with this car at the same venue before. Not only that but it beats Lewis Hamilton’s pole time from last year’s F1 race – previously the quickest lap around Spa – by almost 8/10ths of a second.

You can watch parts of the extremely quick lap in the video below.

In the process of setting the lap time, Neel Jani achieved a top speed of 360 km/h. Not to shabby for a four-cylinder motor. It may even be as quick as some Golf 1 models running around South Africa…

“The 919 Evo is brutally impressive,” commented Jani. “It is definitely the fastest car I ever drove. The grip level is at a fully new dimension for me, I couldn’t imagine this amount beforehand.

“The speed on which everything happens on a single lap with the 919 Evo is that fast that the demand on reaction speed is very different to what I was used to in the WEC.

Porsche is embarking on a ‘World Tour’ with its now-retired LMP1 racecars so expect a few more incredibly quick lap times to be set at other well-known circuits.