Driven by Romain Dumas, the all-electric SuperVan 4.2 stormed around the Bathurst circuit in an eye-watering 1m56.764s.

That put is just behind the closed-car lap record set by Jules Gounon in an unrestricted Mercedes AMG GT3 car last weekend, which was a 1m56.605s.

The near-record SuperVan run followed significant development of the car over the past two weekends, including a steering revamp during the week aided by Dick Johnson Racing and even a local Bathurst fabricator.

According to Sriram Pakkam, who heads up the SuperVan programme for Ford, the sub-two-minute time came as a real surprise.

“That is unbelievably quick,” he said. “It’s a heavy car, we didn’t expect to go that fast.

“We kept learning through the weekend, two weeks of learning, and put it all together for the last lap.

“Amazing, we’re all over the moon. It took so much work to get here. A lot of nitty gritty grinding away at the details. Hardcore engineering work went in to this. A lot of hard work.”

The SuperVan’s Aussie tour continues next month with appearances at the Adelaide Motorsport Festival and the Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix.