Agree with both: over 10 minutes faster than Brownlee and Neumann, and as far as I can see the fastest Ironman ever (disregarding downhill swims and known short courses; Ditlev's outrageous Roth time was not an IM per se though clearly 'faster').
https://www.trirating.com/...an-distance-records/
Baekkegaard's marathon was to (his high) standard (sub-2:38 three times now), without any 'race pressure' but with a full on 4:01 bike. 'All' he has to do is race like this in a big race: FP swim, 4 hour bike and a sub-2:40 run: sorted.
Burton recorded the fastest ever Australian IM time, four minutes quicker than Neumann's at Kona 2022.
"helped his ranking" Note that this will not improve his current #11 PTO ranking: he's on 89.07 points with a lowest counting score of 88.53 from Roth. With the 5% bonus for a silver IM he'll get just under that 88.53 from earlier today.

"this takes a LOT of pressure off his planning for next year" I'd be interested to see your expanded take on that. I guess that the top 20 (of those that 'go long' and DB must be top 10) who are the ones for whom the IM Series is of interest, will do two IM Series IMs (two of: Texas, LP, Vitoria, Cairns, Frankfurt) and surely will expect to pick up a slot (if they're genuinely (as opposed to wishful) top 20). Maybe the competition in those will be too fierce and slots hard to come by.
A fair few (maybe 10) of those notional top 20 have qualified already, and those 'merely' validating can be discarded when considering slot allocation.
https://www.trirating.com/nice-kona-2024/