Porsche 918 Spyder At The Island
We don鈥檛 know who designed the Phillip Island circuit, but we wouldn鈥檛 be surprised if they were the sort of person who watches car crash compilations on YouTube for fun. It鈥檚 the kind of place where, if you fall off, you close your eyes, bend the brake pedal and do Hail Marys. Not the ideal venue, you鈥檇 think, to let a bunch of Aussie motoring hacks loose in the fastest and most expensive road-going Porsche ever. 1.5m 918 Spyder, let alone a track with gravel traps the size of Olympic long-jump pits, with a secondary line of old tyres filled with mosquito larvae. But, ah, those folks at Porsche aren鈥檛 so silly. They organised a pacecar: Craig Baird. In a Carrera Cup car. Which has MOTOR tasting fingernails. And puts into perspective just how fast the 918 - a car that seeks to distill Porsche at its engineering mightiest - really is.
Its spec sheet is poetry to an engineer鈥檚 ear. A carbonfibre monocoque cradles a 4.6-litre naturally-aspirated V8 based, in concept at least, on that in the RS Spyder LMP2 car. Oh, yes, a Clubsport makes more torque than that, you chortle. But a Clubsport doesn鈥檛 have an extra 210kW and 585Nm of electric motors. One at each end, fore and aft, work the 918鈥檚 lower revs like hum-quiet rockets. The 585Nm is all yours from 1rpm. Together the V8 and electric motors make 652kW at 8500rpm and 鈥渂etween鈥?917Nm and 1280Nm, because to unleash such torque in the lower gears would be tyre-frying madness. The torque figure alone is enough to make you arch your head backwards and cackle. We鈥檙e talking 0-100km/h in 2.6sec, 0-200km/h in 7.2, 0-400m in 9.9, and a 345km/h v-max. It鈥檚 worth remembering Porsche is conservative with its cars鈥?performance claims. In its all-electric E-Power mode the 918 moves silently and can do around 30 kilometres on batteries alone. With 240V power the 918 will fully recharge in less than four hours.
Plugged into a quick charging socket, 25 minutes. And even in electric-only mode you鈥檒l embarrass hot hatches at the lights - the 918 will do 0-100km/h in just over seven silent seconds. It feels fast, too, because there鈥檚 no engine roaring as it pulls through gears - it鈥檚 just silent, eerie thrust, the building of tyre noise and a subtle but cool electric motor whine. About two thirds through the throttle pedal travel there鈥檚 a stiff point which, when pushed through, disrupts the peace with 4.6 litres of flat plane-crank V8. Having 鈥渨armed up鈥?in a 911 Turbo and 911 GT3, two cars that hardly feel like they have socks stuck in their airboxes, MOTOR is invited, surreally, to the 918鈥檚 driver鈥檚 seat. Sunk into the low, recessed seat, in a nest of glossy carbon fibre, the 918 is like sitting in a giant street luge. You feel 5mm off the deck. Two headlights menacingly bulge at the bottom corners of the windscreen.
We have just three laps to acclimatise to left-hand drive, a man in the passenger seat trying to shout over a 9000rpm V8 in a thick German accent, and four driving modes to sample. The 918 will do 290-odd km/h on the front straight, too, we鈥檙e told. It begins by selecting drive with a dash-mounted shift selector, the size of a small chicken drumstick. Fractions of a second later, it feels like all the blood from my eyeballs has sloshed to the back of my skull. I鈥檓 only just able to keep my vision on the suddenly-rapidly-approaching horizon. The thrust is just severe. Gnngghhll, I groan, as my chin presses into my chest. It鈥檚 disorientating, almost uncomfortable, borderline violent. It sounds fast, too, rising in volume and menace as you roar through that giant tacho. At 7000rpm it feels like the noise and intensity have reached their climax. Yet there鈥檚 still two numbers to go on the tacho. At 9000rpm the thing is howling with rage, the distinctive sound of a flat-plane crank V8.
In fact, it sounds similar to a 458 Italia, whose not-so-different engine uses the same crank configuration. It鈥檚 loud, but is the 918 musical? If you asked the Sydney Symphony Orchestra to recreate the 918鈥檚 exhaust note, it wouldn鈥檛 take that many instruments. They鈥檇 just need to be played angrily. The acceleration having had its way with my innards, like spaghetti in a centrifuge, I am able to start focusing on just what is happening as we tip into turn one. It takes both flat whites I had that morning to be able to mentally record every sensation of my three laps for later playback. And three laps, even at Phillip Island, doesn鈥檛 last long in something this quick. A few corners later, the first thing I notice, perhaps obviously, is the steering. It鈥檚 meaty yet, at 2.3 turns lock-to-lock, lithe. It鈥檚 heavy in your hands, even if the information from the front tyres is coming to you through copper cable more than fibre-optic.