Sept. 9 - There's a new way to get your street creds, and it's called the Nurburgring Nordschleife in Germany, once used for grand prix races, before it was deemed too dangerous.
In recent months, North American manufacturers have been using this road course as a testing standard... forget about SAE or ASME requirements. To hold the official lap record for the Nordschleife is nothing less than a pot of gold. For the Nordschleife, anything in the 7-second range is hugely respectable. In June, Chevy posted a time, with its 2009 Corvette ZR1, of 7:26.4.
More recently, Chrysler did the same with a new model Viper. Hah...the game is afoot! Using a 2009 Viper ACR, they set a new lap recoprd of 7:22. That segment of the track, the North Loop, almost claimed the life of then-reigning Formula One world champion, Niki Lauda, in 1976.
A new track was built next to the old one in the early 1980s and officially called the Nurburgring, but the route that performance junkies follow today - the Nordschleife - is the original track, one that Sir Jackie Stewart called "The Green Hell." Of the road course, Sir Jackie said, “Those who weren’t scared weren’t driving fast enough.”
Other manufacturers that routinely use the track include: BMW, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Nissan, Lexus and Saleen. The absolute lap record of 6 minutes, 11 seconds was set in 1984 by Stefan Bellof, driving a Porshe 956 around the 73-turn, 12.03-mile circuit.
In recent months, North American manufacturers have been using this road course as a testing standard... forget about SAE or ASME requirements. To hold the official lap record for the Nordschleife is nothing less than a pot of gold. For the Nordschleife, anything in the 7-second range is hugely respectable. In June, Chevy posted a time, with its 2009 Corvette ZR1, of 7:26.4.
More recently, Chrysler did the same with a new model Viper. Hah...the game is afoot! Using a 2009 Viper ACR, they set a new lap recoprd of 7:22. That segment of the track, the North Loop, almost claimed the life of then-reigning Formula One world champion, Niki Lauda, in 1976.
A new track was built next to the old one in the early 1980s and officially called the Nurburgring, but the route that performance junkies follow today - the Nordschleife - is the original track, one that Sir Jackie Stewart called "The Green Hell." Of the road course, Sir Jackie said, “Those who weren’t scared weren’t driving fast enough.”
Other manufacturers that routinely use the track include: BMW, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Nissan, Lexus and Saleen. The absolute lap record of 6 minutes, 11 seconds was set in 1984 by Stefan Bellof, driving a Porshe 956 around the 73-turn, 12.03-mile circuit.
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