Good one, I was going to suggest this. You can get better times than in real life, mainly because you can go flat out through sections it would just be too risky to do so in real life. Also if you brush the barriers you can carry on! If you've read EVO this month you'll see someone sat down for a whole day playing it to see if they could beat the all time lap record with a group C Le Mans type GT prototype. They managed 5m 26s IIRC, in a 92 Nissan Le Mans car.
8m 30 is my best so far, but I was only really going for it on the 1st section to learn it.