When Tesla managed to send a Model S Plaid with Track Package around the Nurburgring Nordschleife in 7:25.231 minutes, it must have set off some serious alarm bells in Zuffenhausen. The Americans had done the unthinkable and lapped the famous circuit faster than Porsche’s fastest EV, the Taycan Turbo S.

Clearly, such an act of four-wheeled provocation could not remain unchallenged, so Porsche engineers went back to the workshop to improve the newest version of their flagship EV. The result is the restoration of German pride after development driver Lars Kern managed to take an insane amount of time off his previous record around the 20.832km track.

Twenty-six seconds. In life, this might not mean much, but in motorsports, it’s an eternity. When Kern crossed the line and recorded a time of 7:07.55 minutes in a pre-series Taycan last August, he had managed to finish the lap 26 seconds faster than he had done with a Taycan Turbo S a year earlier. To shave this much time off a lap—especially a lap around the green hell—is impressive in anyone’s book, and once again puts Porsche ahead of Tesla in the Nurburgring EV stakes.

Porsche had rented the track for a whole day to carry out the record run, and the Taycan was fitted with the mandatory roll cage and racing seats. Next to the much faster overall time, some other facts about the lap are also impressive. Kern, who said he was giving it his all, was 25km/h faster into the Schwedenkreuz section than last year’s car, and if the two had raced each other, the distance between the cars at the end would have been 1.3km.

Finding that much time in an existing vehicle is more than impressive. Porsche has said that it will release the full onboard video of the lap in March, and now we wait for someone else to challenge the Germans at their own game again.

It could be a while, though, and to give you one last number to show how nuts the Taycan lap was: The current EV king of the ring, the Rimac Nevera hypercar, did it in 7:05.298 minutes. That’s just two seconds faster than the four-seater Porsche. Any challengers will have to dig really deep to get anywhere near that time.