Wow, a street legal car and the first ever with a under seven minute lap. The following is the story about the car and its accomplishment along with an optional short video of the car breaking the record.
As a point of interest notice that in the still shot that is shown in the video before you hit the play button that the car has it's left front and right rear wheels completely off the ground.
I think a big part of the lap time is the driver's familiarity with the track. The first link didn't mention who it was, but the 2nd one did - it's Porsche's factory driver and he's probably driven that track a few times...
I recall an episode of Top Gear (UK) where a lady drove a cargo-type van (Euro-style) around the track faster than one of the TG guys did in a "sports" car of some sort (nothing high end, mind you). The TG guys had literally no experience at the track whereas she was very familiar.
I think it was a Ford Transit and a Jaguar Diesel, and I think she came up a few seconds short of a 10 minute lap in the van. It was an intense episode.
You can bet that any car whose makers or team are serious about going for a fast or new record lap time have a driver that's not only talented but is fully familiar with the track.
I watched the entire run of the CTS-V from 2009 where a new record for a production sedan was set. It was the first production sedan to break the eight minute mark. The driver only made about three obvious minor mistakes on the track.
The driver for record setting run in the Porsche Spyder is Marc Lieb a highly accomplished and successful professional race driver as well as a long time Porsche factory driver.
Among his many racing accomplishments and wins, he won the 24 hour Nurburgring endurance race four times. So, I guess you could say he knew that track.
The Corvette is WAY more difficult to handle at speed around a circuit than the Porsche. In fact very few high performance cars are as unstable in that the rear end is prone to break lose than a Corvette. Just watching the two runs of each of the cars without citing "mistakes" you see how much more of the track the Corvette jumps and jitters around than the Porsche. A lot noisier too!
Coming soon will be an improved GTR lap time (improved from 7:15 or whatever their current record is), as they're fanging around a disguised nismo variant that is both lighter and with more power.
It won't get sub 7 seconds but maybe 7:09? that would be a nice target for the less unobtanium porsche 911 turbo to beat.
The Corvette is WAY more difficult to handle at speed around a circuit than the Porsche. In fact very few high performance cars are as unstable in that the rear end is prone to break lose than a Corvette. Just watching the two runs of each of the cars without citing "mistakes" you see how much more of the track the Corvette jumps and jitters around than the Porsche. A lot noisier too!
Indeed, the Vette has no "help" from the front wheels.
·
