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
Not meaningless, but not incredibly useful.
Nurburgring is one of the most downforce rewarding tracks in the world. A lot of the track is around 120 mph or more in a fast car and those fast parts are filled with hill crests and long sweepers. Basically made for aero. If you look at the top road cars lap times, they all have great downforce.
For a road car, even one you bring to the track, aero wont matter nearly as much. Maybe an exception is on say highly illegal backroad excursions, but blasting down back roads at 130 mph is just not something people do much.
I think the best track benchmark we have is C&D’s lightning laps at VIR. That track is just better to compare with for real world performance than Nurburgring. Plus there are more controls in place so no marketing silliness.