I was looking through lap times of different production cars, and there are some wildly out of place cars doing ring laptimes, some cars are faster than they seem they should be, while others are slower than they should be. Which got me thinking how some cars truly get tested in showroom condition, and others get the “marketing” treatment to produce a laptime a showroom car would never touch, solely to sell more cars. Then I found this article that talks exactly about just that.
https://www.thedrive.com/porsche/11012/nurburgring-times-dont-matter
I agree and disagree. The Nordschleife is a better at representing real world performance than the standard racetrack. It’s bumpy, has faults, off camber turns, and lots of elevation. It’s more like racing a Californian canyon road than Spa or Road of America.
Yes a single lap holding the record is nothing but PR. I would want to see how a car performs over 10-15 laps to see what its real performance is. Even still it’s a meaningless metric without a complete review of the car by an auto journalist on the track.
For instance, my GT500 is estimated to be able to perform a 7:11-7:15. It’s roughly around the same time as a 991.2 GT3. But as a novice driver, I’m more than likely able to put down a sub 8 min lap in the Porsche than my GT500.
Other way around. A high horsepower puller masks mistakes better than an agile car.
But it might be somewhat easier to pull together a clean lap in a well balanced car with generally more grip than power, compared to something that wants to blow its tires out through past 4th gear and can carry way more speed on the straights making braking more tricky and critical. There’s also the matter of confidence in the car, which could be worth many seconds alone on a track as long and treacherous as the Ring.
On most tracks but not the Nurburgring when being compared to cars within similar power levels. The ‘ring pushes cars weights around due to the elevation changes. GT3’s really inspire confidence on the track. The GT500 scares the fuck out of you at the limit.
Love the GT500, but can you provide a source for saying it would pull a 7:11-7:15 lap time?
That would be leaps and bounds faster than the lap times i’ve seen for it, which if memory serves is closer to 7:39. Manual ZL1 1LE put down a 7:16 flat, for reference.
Fun fact, the Viper ACR holds the record still for the fastest manual transmission Ring time, as well as fastest american car time at 7:01.3!
https://fastestlaps.com/comparisons/lh235vhe828r Zl1 1le track times vs gt500, the gt500 is very close to 1le in most tracks and beats it in two, maybe on a longer track the power might give it an advantage, probably looking at 7:19-7:15 track times for the gt500 more realistically.
yeah high teens is probably doable on the S550 GT500. Again, love the car, but saying it beats the ZLE around all tracks in the US is just demonstrably not true lol
Cheaper too, zle is great, does sacrifice street livability for its times though, gt500 not so much.
Man you’re so right. A ZLE is a track car that can be driven on the street. I know of a few guys that daily them despite the stiffness, but for me the perfect daily would be the shelby.
I daily mine. It’s a ton of fun to be reminded you’re driving something special all the time. You won’t get bored. It also saves 400lbs vs the GT500, which should help slightly with consumables like brakes and tires.
A 2018 ZL1 Camaro lapped the ring at 7:16. The new GT500 beats the Camaro around all tracks in the U.S.
https://fastestlaps.com/models/ford-mustang-shelby-gt500-s550
So it’s somewhere between a 991.2 GT3 (7:12)and a ZL1 Camaro (7:16)
Nah, ZLE is faster around most
I suspect it’s because the GT500 was tested without the track pack which adds the Cup 2’s. I know for Leguna Seca they had the CFTP.
https://fastestlaps.com/tests/uhk1c6v3dgba
At Eurospeedway they had the normal version with the PS4’s which the 1LE beat. Or the 1LE is just faster in general. I didn’t check every lap time before I made my blanketed statement.
Officially you are right, the best time is 7:39 (#132 overall).
https://fastestlaps.com/models/ford-mustang-shelby-gt500-2013
I don’t really see Spa as being all that different. Lots of elevation, mix of high and low(er) speed corners, so fairly similar. Nordschleife has lots more corners, and is bumpier, but the big difference is the length (and number of corners). A small bobble in a single corner & you’ve blown your lap. Those bumps at the Nordschleife make it so much easier to make a mistake, and all those corners give so many more opportunities for mistakes+ any one mistake will kill your lap… So, times at Nordschleife tend to favor cars that are really fast, but reliably so (or at least have big enough pocketbooks to give them enough chances at a good lap). There are some cars that are insanely fast, but more difficult to drive absolutely at the limit. They will be very hard to set a solid laptime with… it’s also rather expensive to have the ring all to yourself to go for that perfect lap, so it’s not like you get all that many attempts at it (unless you have that nice pocketbook behind you of course)
So … I don’t think Nürburgring lap times are a great metric, but I do think they are a better metric than you’d get from lap times on a similar, but shorter, circuit. (Source: I have laptimes at Spa that I’m fairly happy with, but have yet to set a single lap at Nordschleife that I’d say is great, but Harry’s Lap Timer says I have an optimal lap to be proud of)
Sorry but I think Circuit de Spa is nothing like the Nordschleife. Spa has 20 turns over 7 km, 2 high speed sections, and 100 m of elevation change. It also has pretty decent run-offs. The Nordschleife has 150+ turns over 20 km, several high speed sections, 300 m of elevation change, and virtually no run-offs.
Spa is certainly a challenging and dangerous circuit, but the Nordschleife has earned its reputation of being the most dangerous track in the world for a reason.
The point is that the nordshliefe test how the car breaks, turns (at different speeds), speeds up, at 95% which is what most street users will do. It penalizes cars that are very hard to drive and cars that are unstable over bumps and that’s very important to uses.
99.99% of production cars wouldn’t be able to handle 10-15 laps
10 laps of the Nordschleife is over 200 km. I can’t think of any cars with big enough fuel tanks to go full send for 200 km. Most production cars will overheat their brakes and tyres after 1-2 laps of the ring anyways.