Mercedes-AMG ONE sets record at Nürburgring-Nordschleife
A MERCEDES-AMG ONE driven by Maro Engel has beaten the previous record for road-legal production cars at the challenging and notorious Nürburgring-Nordschleife by a remarkable eight seconds despite less-than-ideal track conditions.
The Mercedes-AMG ONE is now the king of the NürburgringNordschleife with an officially measured and notarized time of 6:35.183 minutes for rounding the 20.832-kilometr track. The hypercar with Formula 1 technology also set a new record in the super sports car category.
“That was really an unforgettable experience,” said Engel after completing the record lap on Oct. 28, 2022. “I didn’t expect that we would be able to set such a lap time with these track conditions. In some crucial areas of the track, it hadn’t dried completely yet and was therefore tricky. That was a special challenge. We tried to find the optimal deployment strategy during the pre-tests.”
“I’m proud of the whole AMG team — everyone who was involved in this project. The various departments in Affalterbach as well as our colleagues at HPP in Brixworth never gave up and continued to push the dream of this vehicle,” he added.
Engel is a German professional race car driver and a long-time Mercedes-AMG factory driver.
At first, it didn’t look like a new record. The weather was sunny with a light wind, but the track was — typical of the Nürburgring in autumn — still damp and partly dirty in some areas. In some sections, such as the fast “Kesselchen” section, the ideal line had not yet completely dried. All in all, they were not ideal conditions — especially for a vehicle in this extreme performance class. By the time the track was passable for a first fast lap, the remaining time had whittled down to less than an hour. With air and asphalt temperatures of just under 20 degrees Celsius, this was only enough for a maximum of four fast laps.
“This success is the welldeserved reward for their hard work. Even though the AMG ONE is certainly more at home on a Grand Prix circuit than on the Nordschleife — as is so often the case with this project — we’ve simply gone one step further,” said Philipp Schiemer, chairman of the board of Management of Mercedes AMG GmbH.
“We’re the first ever to have taken on the challenges of the Nürburgring with a super sports car. That’s also what makes this project so unique and I’m very happy about this fantastic lap time,” he added.
Technically, the record-breaking vehicle had everything that the Mercedes-AMG ONE offers as standard — the hypercar brings Formula 1 hybrid-drive technology from the racetrack to the road for the first time. With one combustion engine and four electric motors, the E Performance hybrid delivers a total of 782 kW (1,063 hp), with the top speed capped at 352 kph. The other motor sport technology ranges from the carbon monocoque and carbon body to the engine/transmission unit as a stressed member and active aerodynamics to the push-rod chassis. With its complex technology, the two-seater Mercedes-AMG ONE offers even more than a Formula 1 racing car in some cases. It features the fully variable AMG Performance 4MATIC+ all-wheel drive with a hybrid-driven rear axle and electrically driven front axle with torque vectoring.