GT500 cars, as you might imagine, are supposed to deliver around 500 horsepower. That was how the category was intended back in its earlier days, but since the mid-nineties, that power figure has climbed to roughly 650 horsepower at the rear wheels. Sharing the aero package with a DTM car, these 2,600-pound monsters able to lap just four seconds slower than an LMP1 machine at the high-speed Fuji Speedway. While they use a carbon tub with some scaffolding attached, the GT500 cars still stand as the world’s fastest production-based racing cars today.

Current cars make that grunt via a 2.0-liter turbo, but the 2013-spec machine in this footage uses the old, 4.5-liter V8. Making a healthy 530 horsepower and a deafening scream, the atmospheric motor makes this lap around Fuji a little more colorful. For Sam Collins, the English voice of Super GT, the experience is pant-wettingly intense.

Of course, they brought in the big guns to frighten Collins. Behind the wheel is 2014 GT500 Champion Tsugio Matsuda, who knows how to extract every ounce of performance from the 2013 Nissan Nismo Motul Autech GT-R GT500. With first-hand experience with the relentless power, the neck-breaking sort of cornering forces, and the way beads of sweat will fly off the face onto the inside of a visor under heavy braking, it’s fair to assume Collins has even more respect for the gladiators who pilot these insane machines.