June 29 dawns with near-perfect weather. Great news as the notoriously fickle weather in the Eifel region of Germany rarely misses an opportunity to throw a spanner in the works. We need to be up and out early as the team wants to make the most of favourable track temperatures before the asphalt soaks up the heat of the day. We’ve been advised there will be an installation lap at 8am, followed by a maximum of three attempts on the record, so we head to the T13 paddock nice and early to see the car being prepped.

Once the small paddock clears of marshals’ cars as they head out to take their places around the 12.9-mile circuit, all that’s left is a Porsche Motorsport truck and trailer and a large rigid framed tent, within which is the 919 Evo and a small bank of data screens. There’s also a stack of Michelin slicks – of bespoke construction and compounds just for the ’Ring record runs – already toasting beneath their warming blankets and stacked in sets, one for each run.

The dilemma facing us is where to go next. The circuit is so big and the car so fast there’s no chance of heading out to find a trackside vantage point from which to see it flash by on a record run and then get back to the paddock before it crosses the timing beam, but to come all this way and not see the 919 Evo out on track seems crazy. In the end we jump in our car and head for Pflanzgarten 1 to see Bernhard on his installation lap. The clatter and slap of rotor blades heralds his approach as the chase helicopter pursues the 919 up the hill from Bergwerk to the Karussell, then on to Höhe Acht – the highest point on the lap – before jinking through the Wipperman and Brünnchen sections away behind the trees to our right.

Then, in a flash the 919 Evo is upon us, bursting into view as it spears down the incline towards the Pflanzgarten jump. Though clearly not in maximum attack mode, it’s a mighty impressive spectacle, the sharp rasp of the 2.0-litre (700-plus bhp!) V4 petrol engine overlaid by the whine of the 440bhp MGU and a thwack as 850kgs of car punches a hole in the cool morning air.

Back at T13 there’s an ordered hubbub around the car as the team goes through its checks, swaps to a fresh set of tyres. Bernhard hops out and heads into the truck for a debrief, then reappears 20 minutes or so later and jumps into the car for his first attempt. There’s no opportunity for an out lap, so he heads the ‘wrong’ way out of T13 and onto the Döttinger Höhe straight, weaving to get some heat into the tyres before turning around and blasting back towards the start.

This is pressure with a capital P. Yes, he’s spent hours in the Porsche Motorsport simulator, but as Bernhard explained the previous evening, the Nordschleife isn’t somewhere you can apply everything you do on a virtual lap. The bumps, the kerbs, the proximity to the barriers and the blinding speed of the place mean he’s driving very much on feel and instinct rather than by sim-honed rote.

In an explosion of noise and energy Bernhard and the 919 Evo smash by the T13 paddock and plunge down the Hatzenbach. Ahead of him one of the most fearsome sections of the lap – the shimmy up and over Flugplatz and the flat-out charge towards Schwedenkreuz and the ludicrously daunting plunge into the Foxhole.

While Bernhard fights in the eye of the storm his efforts are played out on the bank of computer screens back at base camp. Scanned by expert eyes, his inputs appear as real-time data traces, the peaks and troughs plotting a lap of unimaginable speed. He’s in radio contact with the team, but unsurprisingly the airwaves remain rather silent while he’s on the lap.

When he crosses the line to complete his first proper run there are knowing smiles from the team. They’ve broken the record with a 5min 31sec lap, but there’s also a sense they know there’s plenty more to come. Stephen Mitas, chief engineer for the 919 Evo confirms as much, nodding at the screens as he says “That’s already pretty tasty. And he’s not even warmed up yet…”

The team falls back into the now-familiar routine of prepping the car while Bernhard is debriefed. There’s an added sense of focus now, with much attention on the suspension. I see mechanics calmly changing a rear damper unit as one of the many precautions taken to ensure the car is as fresh and safe as it can be. Mitas confirms the stresses exerted on the car are far in excess of anything seen in the WEC, so they can’t be too careful.

After his second lap – a 5min 24.375sec – there’s a whisper he might not go again, but then Bernhard strides out of the truck and climbs in once more. Does he need to?

No, not really. The point has been proved. Yet the team obviously knows there’s more in the car. Question is, is there more in Timo?

Just 5min 19.546sec later we have the answer. The release of emotion from the engineers is palpable. Clear enough to know there will be no more runs. For Mitas, the man who pushed for the Evo to happen, it’s a very special moment: “This is what motor sport should be. Something extreme. Something at the limit.” In modern motor sport, where teams tend to behave as though they are delivering pre-determined outcomes rather than pulling off surprises, moments like this are rare indeed.

More by luck than pre-planning, after the hugs, whoops and back-slapping celebrations I find myself in Timo’s path as he walks away from the car and back to the truck. I shake his hand and ask ‘How was that?’, while giving him an exaggerated wide-eyed expression. He laughs, puffs out his cheeks, widens his eyes and says with absolute conviction, “That was not a walk in the park, I can tell you!”

With a brief pause in proceedings I take the chance to ask Mitas if he could print me a data trace of the record lap as a souvenir. He says ‘yes’ and takes me into the truck. This is the inner sanctum, filled with more data engineers, all working at compact fold-down desks. There’s a big screen at the back of the trailer, where to my immense joy the guys are about to take their first look at the in-car footage.

What follows is a privilege Bellof’s engineers – and the wider world – were denied: the chance to ride alongside the driver on the fastest-ever lap of the Nordschleife. It’s a truly gob-smacking spectacle. We shake our heads, suck air through our teeth, even watch through our fingers at times, almost unwilling to look, but unable to tear our eyes away from the unfolding drama. It’s the only time I’ve ever watched in-car footage and had that same slightly nauseous sense of awe and foreboding I get when watching on-board footage from the Isle of Man TT. The speed is insane: 205mph into the Foxhole compression; a little under 190mph through the Lauda Kink; 229mph on the Döttinger straight and an average speed of 145mph. Even though it’s just us in the truck, we break into spontaneous applause.

I’m heading towards the door of the truck, data sheet in hand, when Bernhard walks in. I’m normally slow to pounce in these moments, but with rare presence of mind I seize the chance to get Timo and Mitas to sign my treasured piece of paper. As the hero of the day signs and dates the data sheet we have another brief exchange. It’s utterly revealing.

“Never in my whole life have I experienced anything like that. The speed was so intense I could feel my brain struggling to process things through some sections of the lap. Everything was happening so fast.”

But surely that’s what you’d hoped this lap would feel like? “Yes! Absolutely. Nothing in my career has felt anything like this. Nothing. I’m glad it’s this way. I wanted it to be something beyond what I know, but this… I’ll never feel anything like this again.” His words fade to a reflective pause and for a few seconds the silence speaks more eloquently than any words either of us can muster.

Looking back, I genuinely think this was the moment when what he’d done began to sink in. The significance of the lap, the commitment he’d shown, the intensity and absurdity of the speed. And his name mentioned in the same breath as his hero, Stefan Bellof.

Should Porsche have taken the record? Does this effort actually count for anything? These questions and more were swirling around cyberspace within moments of Bernhard’s time being announced. Personally, I believe Bellof’s qualifying and race laps in that remarkable 1983 Nürburgring 1000Kms meeting remain the lap records. Achievements enshrined in our hearts and the history books as absolute benchmarks, set by a mercurial and ultimately tragic genius during a live race meeting. Among traffic, in a racing car with half the power and downforce and on a bumpier Nordschleife.

Still, I believe the purists’ ire is misplaced, largely because Bernhard and Porsche haven’t sought to diminish Bellof’s legacy, but mostly because it is something Bellof himself would surely have relished: the fastest racing car in the world pitted against the toughest circuit in the world.

Consequently I believe this new and frankly astonishing outright lap record enriches rather than erases Bellof’s sacred piece of motor sport history. We’d long suspected that, given the opportunity, a modern-day Ringmeister in a contemporary machine would blitz it.

Thanks to Porsche and Bernhard, now we know.

919 HYBRID vs 919 EVO

Spot the difference between racer and record chaser

Aero Combination of passive (flatter nose, widened rear wing and deeper front and rear diffusers) and active (front and rear DRS) aerodynamics generate 53 per cent more downforce and 66 per cent improvement in aero efficiency for vastly increased cornering speeds.

Weight Because it’s effectively a one-lap time attack car, endurance racing kit such as air jacks, lights, air-conditioning and many of the on-board control systems have been jettisoned to achieve a 39kg weight saving over the standard car’s 875kg.

Engine Porsche increased the turbo boost and fuel flow of the  2.0-litre V4 petrol engine meaning power jumps from 500bhp to 720bhp. One limiting factor is the exhaust energy recovery system – effectively a turbine within the exhaust which generates electrical energy. This is now working beyond its design limitations of 120,000rpm due to the increase of exhaust gases.

Hybrid Unlike the WEC-spec 919, which had to manage its electrical energy to deliver boost at pre-determined points on the circuit (mainly in the early exit phase of low-speed corners), the Evo’s more powerful hybrid system delivers electric energy whenever the throttle is open. Power is up from 400 to 440bhp, bringing the Evo’s total output to 1160bhp.