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Autocar On The Nurburgring


scathing
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An interesting (but old) article for when Autocar tried to meet the production car lap records for the Nurburgring.

They took:

Caterham Superlight R500

Nissan Skyline GT-R (probably an R33)

Porsche 911 Carrera

RUF CTR II

Our goal could scarcely be more simple. We want to break the production car lap record for the famous old 12.95-mile Nurburgring. Currently it stands at 7min 59sec, set by a Nissan Skyline GTR in 1995. But given that the Skyline set the time during its development stage and was free of the speed limiter that prevents UK versions from doing more than 156mph, we can no longer count it as the true production car record holder. Especially as it's far from clear how much turbo boost the GTR was running during the lap, or how much tweaking the rear-wheel steer system had undergone.

So for these reasons and more, the standard production car lap record will no longer belong to the Skyline after this event; it will instead hold the record for a modified road car. Unless, of course, the unchipped, unfettled GTR that colleague Allan Muir is due to arrive in tomorrow can match, or perhaps better, that 7min 59sec time...

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"Recently, Autocar magazine performed a test in Nurburgring track with this car against Porsche new 911 Carrera (300hp), Ruf 911 CTR2 (520hp) and Nissan Skyline GTR (280hp, 4wd, 4ws), the lap time is amazingly found as follows : 

Caterham Superlight R .......... 8 min 6.2 sec

Ruf 911 CTR2 ....................... 8 min 15.0 sec

Nissan Skyline GTR .............. 8 min 28.1 sec

Porsche 911 Carrera ............. 8 min 38.4 sec

Benefited by the light weight and superbly balanced chassis, the Superlight R ran considerably faster than others in bends, although it lost a lot of time in fighting with drag in straights. Road tester found it handles very much better than others, it is virtually a racing car. 

Nurburgring is usually regarded as the best place to test a car's real world performance - it has high speed straights as well as a hundred bends with different speeds. The Superlight R broke the track record for non-modified road car, so, maybe we can call it "the fastest car in the world". Hard to accept ? Ferrari F50, McLaren F1, Nismo Skyline 400R and Porsche 911 GT1 (this is really a racing car!) might be faster, but until they are tested in Nurburgring, the Caterham still remains to be the King."

Interesting Nurburgring reading....

Edited by Beeble
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