It’s only January and we might have found the top competitor of the year in the 2018 Ford GT. This American made supercar seems to be doing some serious damage to the competition, and its got to be making other automakers a little uneasy. At a recent run at the Virginia International Raceway, the Ford GT destroyed other times to become the new record holder with a 2:38.6 lap.

Earlier in the month, Car and Driver announced that they has beat the 918 Spyder with a 2:43 lap time in the GT at VIR. They admitted that the time could be improved with a better driver, and Ford Performance stepped up to make that happen with this twin-turbo V6 superbeast.

Ford Performance driver, Billy Johnson, got behind the wheel of the 647-horsepower Ford GT to try and do better at VIR than the drivers for Car and Driver. He managed to do just that with a two-minute 38.62-second pass around the track. This lap set a new record, kicking the Dodge Viper ACR out of its position.

So what’s next? Are we to expect the Ford GT to show up on the Nurburgring? We hope so, but just because it dominated at VIR, doesn’t mean it can replicate the success overseas. A good example of this is when the Viper ACR beat the 918 Spyder’s time at VIR, but fell short to pace the same lap times as the 918 while running on the Nurburgring.