Ringside Seat: record breakers

Dale grasps the thorny issue of 'ring records by getting involved with one

Setting a record at the Nurburgring can be a little more fluid than you might think. Shortly after each record makes the news, I'm often asked questions, such as, "How do they decide if it's a legitimate record?"

The answer to this question is another question.

"Who are 'they'?"

If only Norris McWhirter was still around...

They are us. You are them. You, me and the websites, forums and magazines we all read, contribute towards and generally live out through our petrol-burning hobby. We legitimise, we also criticise. Or, in internet lingo, we flame. For example, I remember when Ferrari set a new record for the 599XX. It wasn't a street car, it was a race car.

Except the laptime has been hit by certain rear-engined Beetle drivers many times before. So, really it was more like a record for Italian cars built by Ferrari that are not road-legal but also not raced. I pretty much blogged exactly that, and moved on.

Who remembers the GT-R debacle? Porsche calling foul with much off-the-record-but-on-it muttering that the GT-R's claimed laptime was impossible. Nissan then making a press release that offered driver training to the Porsche test team... Ba-zinger.

There's also a certain amount of trust that the manufacturers involved are not cheating in any way. Sometimes that trust is misplaced, that's all I can say, but most times not. Most engineers I deal with would sooner commit Seppuku than lie about the capabilities of the products they often spend years on developing. They're so personally invested in it that they wouldn't even consider cheating.

A record is a record and deserves celebration!

Of course, the pessimists would also point out that it's this obsession that sometimes drives the same men and women to up the boost, order the 'special' tyres and swap the brake pads and discs while nobody's looking. Then they would, theoretically, get everybody involved to sign a Non Disclosure Agreement with a €250,000 penalty for opening your mouth. For example.

No such dramas with the lap record my boss set last week though. A couple of years ago Subaru lashed up a lovely little test-mule based on a Spec C (lightweight rally car base) Impreza with the latest 320hp motor. It got all the tastiest parts from the STI workshop behind Sabine's house in the village. It wasn't even a production car, but it was road-legal (on temporary plates) and it was definitely the fastest production-based (let's call it) Impreza. So it was a natural target for Revolution and their own two-door Project Nurburgring STi.

Unlike Subaru Technica International, Newcastle-based tuners Revolution couldn't rely on booking the Nordschleife exclusively. Nor could they pull strings for Tomi Makinen to come over. In the end, and having reviewed video of Tomi over-revving and kerbing the hell out of the original 7min55sec Subaru car, I think they made the right decision to hire my employer at Rent4Ring, Fredy Lienhard, for the lap.

On the day Fredy opted for the medium-boost setting, good for about 400hp. Interestingly the '320hp' factory car was only a few km/h slower than the Cosworth-fettled Revolution car. I think that says a lot about how stock that particular car was.

And at 7min53sec the 400hp Project car was two seconds quicker than the factory car, so that's a record. In the absence of any official Nurburgring laptime arbitration, all we can say is that it's a laptime that's been written down, talked about, discussed all over the world.

Oh, and it's also brilliant to watch. So grab a cuppa, sit back and listen to that Cosworth-stroked boxer bellow...

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mikebradford

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