Well, that didn’t last long.
Nearly three months ago, Ford announced its $325,000-plus Mustang GTD broke the record for American performance cars on the Nürburgring, cementing its status by breaking the 7-minute lap barrier. It and driver Dirk Müller threw down the gauntlet with a time of 6:52.072. Well, now the Blue Oval has some catching up to do, as Chevrolet just beat Ford’s time with the Corvette ZR1X…and the standard ZR1.
Naturally, the 1,250-horsepower Corvette ZR1X — revealed last month as the pinnacle of the C8 generation — took the quickest time of 6:49.275, with vehicle dynamics engineer Drew Cattell at the wheel. In addition to now being the fastest American car around the ‘Ring, Cattell is also the fastest non-professional driver in the list of official laps. That said, he does still have 600 laps around the Nürburgring Nordschleife, so he still has plenty of experience.
As for the “normal” 1,064-horsepower ZR1, fellow dynamics engineer Brian Wallace achieved a 6:50.763 lap time.
When you lay down record-breaking times like these, it’s all but certain (and expected) for the automaker to take a victory lap, and that’s exactly what GM President Mark Reuss did in the company’s announcement Thursday. “No auto manufacturer has done a Nürburgring lap attempt like this before. From development through production, and now at the Nürburgring Nordscleife, the Green Hell, we have clearly shown there is no limit to what our GM engineers and vehicles can accomplish. These are the best Corvettes in history, period.”
To further try and drive that point home, Chevy brought along a Corvette Z06, with 670 horsepower on tap from the naturally aspirated version of its 5.5-liter flat-plane-crank V8. With vehicle performance manager Aaron Link at the wheel, it managed a 7:11.826, which still puts it among the higher tiers of performance cars.
Somehow, I get the feeling Ford CEO Jim Farley isn’t going to take kindly to GM’s latest development here. Especially that “no other auto manufacturer” comment — that won’t do, so I’m sure we’ll see Ford’s rebuttal before too long.
