Terrific camerawork helps tell the story of lapping the ‘ring in under 7 minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9IWiTpWeiM
[YouTube] [Via Bryan O’Neil Hughes]
Terrific camerawork helps tell the story of lapping the ‘ring in under 7 minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9IWiTpWeiM
[YouTube] [Via Bryan O’Neil Hughes]
Nordschleife, my ass. Let’s see how far he can get in seven minutes on the 101.
[Hah! We’re about to trade in the 335hp A8L for a plug-in Fusion. Know why? ‘Cause the latter blows past the former in the carpool lane. —J.]
Thanks for sharing – my week on that track was one of the most challenging experiences of my life…I can’t fathom doing it at 2X speed. Oh yeah, thanks for the coolest book in my collection too (Driving Ambition)…probably the closest I’ll get to owning (the other) “Mac”.
[:-) —J.]
Reminds me of a favorite line from Top Gear:
the closest ill come to driving this is rfactor2
Rob said:
[Hah! We’re about to trade in the 335hp A8L for a plug-in Fusion. Know why? ‘Cause the latter blows past the former in the carpool lane. —J.]
Would this be to do with those traffic jams we’ve heard about, but never actually seen in New Zealand’s South Island (excluding Christchurch) ? 😉
I can remember reading in the UK weekly Motorcycle News many years ago, that the outright lap record for a motorcycle round The Ring was held by BMW’s chief road tester on a standard road bike. This was because of the incredibly technical nature of the circuit, which made track knowledge crucial for good lap times.
Hi Trevor,
I can confirm that (“regular”) street bikes own the bike records (they haven’t raced bikes there in over 20 years)…they’re in the low to mid 7’s. So, a BMW tester could have done it (and would certainly have spent a ton of time there – that’s who instructed us), but he would have done so on a Japanese bike.
As for the track, it’s a little bit of everything and it is technical in many places, but it is FAST (tons of top-of-3rd stuff, triple digits)…it ends with a very long straight that we regularly eclipsed 150MPH on (people actually take it easy there, as you kill your brakes coming out of it). The bikes are pretty wild there, but in my experience, the car guys were even crazier.
Interesting to note here is that the McLaren time is still unofficial…not listed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nürburgring_Nordschleife_lap_times
There’s a real rival between the McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder and Ferrari LaFerrari…nobody actually knows who’s fastest on the Ring at this point.
John, I’ve turned this into a car blog.
[Not for the first time. 😉 —J.]
>John, I’ve turned this into a car blog.
For years, the Miss America contest has promoted itself as a “scholarship pageant,” presumably because it awards some scholarships to the winners. By that logic, if they awarded the winner a car, it would be a car show.
Funny you mention your upcoming Fusion, John, since the P1 is also a hybrid. The sounds that car makes are both brutally familiar and otherworldly bizarre. I’ll take one in flat black, please. 🙂