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.
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“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.
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