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
It is a measuring stick, but unlike those other metrics, you can’t apply the same corrections for weather, so there’s going to be less consistency.
I think it’s a good place for car development, but headline times do need a pinch of salt or so.
Another fantastic point. Some laps on record have spots of wet track which can throw away several seconds. Then of course temperature…