Claims about the fastest Nurburgring lap records are largely pointless, but they are fun. Here is the fastest ever and a few unlikely ones, writes Damien O’Carroll.

Fastest ever Porsche 919 Hybrid Evo – 5 minutes 19.6 seconds

After it officially retired the dominant 919 Hybrid from racing, Porsche just decided ‘‘to hell with this’’ and cranked its Le Mans challenger up to 11, just to see exactly what it could do.

It shattered lap records at several tracks in Europe, proved it was faster than an F1 car and, with German Timo Bernhard behind the wheel, shattered the fastest-ever lap time around the Nurburgring that had been held by Porsche since 1983 when Stefan Bellof recorded a time of 6:11.1 in a 956 during qualification for a race.

Fastest SUV Mercedes-AMG GLC 63 S – 7 minutes 49.4 seconds

We never used to associate SUVs with the Nurburgring, but that has changed with the rise of high performance SUVs. The AMG SUV beat out the previous record-holder – the Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio – by just two seconds, after the Stelvio had shattered the previous SUV record, which had been held for a few years by the Porsche Cayenne Turbo S.

The AMG is the current top dog at the ’Ring, but there are several powerful SUVs that haven’t had a crack at it, including the firebreathing Lamborghini Urus.

Fastest ute Holden VF SS Redline – 8 minutes 19.5 seconds

This is a fairly niche category, but Holden’s ace test driver Rob Trubiani (technically a ‘‘vehicle dynamics engineer’’) nailed his VF SS around the ’Ring back in 2013 to claim the title.

Yeah, OK, so Ford never tried, but there aren’t any other utes setting lap records either. Besides, Trubiani’s time in the VF is only a second slower than a Porsche Boxster S or a Ferrari 355, which is frighteningly impressive in something that would regularly be seen doing duty as a tradie’s ute. Well, the tradie’s boss’s ute, at least.

Fastest van VW Transporter – 9 minutes 58.1 seconds

While Nurburgring legend Sabine Schmitz held the van record in a Ford Transit with a 10:08.5, it was utterly shattered last year by a bloke driving a rental van.

Well, that bloke was a touring car driver – BTCC driver Rob Austin – but the van was a rental.

One of Austin’s sponsors was a rental car company and the Transporter was straight off their rental fleet and completely unmodified, although they did eventually strip out the interior and ditch the passenger’s seat in pursuit of a sub-10 minute lap.

Fastest car made from recycled rubbish Trabant P50 – 16 minutes 1 second

Yep, really. Back in 1960 the official factory racing team of VEB Sachsenring – manufacturers of the Trabant – threw a P50 around the legendary track as a stage of a rally it was taking part in.

It wasn’t fast, but considering it packed a tiny engine that produced a meagre 15kW of power and took more than 25 seconds to hit 100kmh, the fact that it would only be lapped twice by the fastest road legal car ever to go around the ’Ring (the Lamborghini Aventador at 6:44.9) is impressive!