Official: Porsche 918 laps Ring in 7:14

Many automotive news sites recently reported Porsche's new 918 supercar lapping Nurburgring Nordschleife in 7 minutes and 14 seconds.

Initially the only source backing these news was a leaked 918 brochure.

Recently, however, Porsche have confirmed these news with a press release.

So, how good of a time is 7:14? Looking at the Nordschleife page we see that this is the fastest laptime ever recorded for a street legal production Porsche. This is to be expected - I wouldn't imagine Porsche boasting a laptime that was slower of any of it's lesser models (namely 7:18 by GT2 RS).

There are, however, few cars that could do even better. The most provocative example is far far cheaper but somewhat crude racecar-like Viper ACR with a time of 7:12.13.

Porsches official laptimes and performance data is often conservative, and I expect to see this laptime improved, when someone brave enough outside Porsche gets behind the wheel of the 918.

I don't know how many laps Porsche did and and under what circumstances (weather, traffic). No onboard footage is available yet.

Eventually we might see Porsche themselves claim a better laptime, especially if competitors like Ferrari or McLaren come up with a better time for their cars.

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