There’s a drive-mode dial on the steering wheel, similar to the picture-mode dial you’ll find on a digital SLR camera. Race Hybrid mode comes online with a two-click twist, firing up the 4.6L V8 the instant the dial sets into its detent. It’s abrupt and instant and nearly startling as it barks loudly to life and settles into a quivering and uptight idle, waiting for further instructions from the throttle.

Should that instruction be one of the full-throttle variety, there’s a horrifying reaction. With on-demand all-rpm electric torque boosting the high-strung thrust of the 9,100-rpm V8, acceleration is truly instant, and violent in intensity. There’s no building up to a power peak: the 918 Spyder just leaps forward with immediate ferocity. Fighter jets accelerate this fast, I think. You picture a sort of invisible pulley system attaching the front of the 918 Spyder to some point far in the distance via the throttle pedal. Push it down, and you’re there, right away. God, it’s fast.

And that’s accompanied by a jagged growl-turned-wail from the combustion engine, which sends spent gasses out of a mere foot-long exhaust system with a pair of tailpipes that exit the top of the engine cover, almost vertically, and send the sound straight up into the air, right towards sound-lady’s tower, while I hauled the 918 Spyder towards the crest of the uphill climb at the back of the track in second gear, doing about 8,500 rpm, with my foot to the floor.

“Tell her I’m sorry,” I offered, smirking.
“No, you’re not.”

Hopefully, sound-lady was on lunch somewhere far away – because I was thinking so much about lifting the throttle that I forgot to lift the throttle. I’d know if sound-lady’s instrument had heard me when I pitted a few laps later.

The brakes are as massive as the acceleration, and lack much the typical spongy, inconsistent feel delivered by hybrid brake systems as I know them. Braking capabilities with the ceramic rotors and monstrous, fluorescent green calipers are absolutely crushing – and the pedal tells you that with decent feel. You’d go through the seatbelt if it were any thinner.  You can hear the braking too, via the collection of noises generated as the regeneration componentry converts some of the braking force (all of it in less urgent stops) back into electricity stored for future blasts of acceleration that would coax sequential F-bombs out of your church-going grandmother.

2015 Porsche 918 Spyder wheel, steering wheel, gauges. Click image to enlarge

But beyond the rule-violating sound and rocket-thruster levels of forward acceleration, this big super-Porsche is super-flattering to drive. Though the numbers, pricing and especially acceleration and cornering G’s are among the most intimidating you’ll find in something with four wheels and a warranty, the driving experience isn’t.