Matt Prior
Do Nordschleife lap times really matter?
There are some lap times I care about but, for general road cars, I couldn’t give a monkey’s
Do you care how fast the new BMW Z4 goes around the Nürburgring? I ask because if you choose the right version of the nextgen car, reportedly it’s quicker than an M2. Which is good, presumably, if you care, or if the German circuit is part of your daily commute. But, for most of us, it isn’t.
Is there too much Nordschleife lap timing? I’ve been told there is: that it’s irrelevant, that it actually tells you nothing about how a car drives (except that the ride is probably horrible when you’re not on the Nürburgring), that it is nothing more than automotive showing off.
These things are probably all true. There are some lap times I care about – the Porsche 919 Evo, for one – but, for general road cars, I couldn’t give a monkey’s. I wonder if the Lamborghini Aventador SVJ is a less enjoyable car than a slower ’Ring Aventador would be.
Trouble is, it is also useful, in that it’s to some extent a reliable, repeatable performance benchmark, particularly now the old ones have become irrelevant. Cars will go from 0-60mph in as little time as their drivetrains and tyres will allow. And a top speed of above 250mph means a car’s character is dominated solely by the fact that it’ll get there. So for the rest of them? 200? 207? 198? It genuinely no longer matters.
Which leaves the industry in search of a benchmark it can use to indicate a car’s performance. A lap time does that, and the Nürburgring is the only place they all go, and which is closest – though still not close enough – to a road. It’s a bit tiresome, then, but the alternative is we decide absolutes don’t matter.
Spare a thought today for poor old Mercedes-amg, creator of the forthcoming Project One hypercar, whose engine was until earlier this year being dynamometer-tested at the Mercedes Formula 1 plant in Brixworth. Since then, it has also been put inside a car and driven around private test tracks, like at Millbrook in Bedfordshire. Alas. “Today it turns out to be more difficult to keep this testing confidential,” Mercedes-amg says, in a press release published alongside accompanying pictures of the Project One, which it had a very good professional photographer take on Millbrook’s Hill Route and which are, as far as I can find, the only pictures of the Project One spotted testing.
Millbrook’s Hill Route – as its name suggests, a sweeping, up and down handling circuit – lies deep within this private facility, behind tall barb-topped fences. Almost all of it is tree-lined beyond the run-off, and is all-but invisible to anyone who isn’t standing next to the track itself, like Mercedes’ photographer was. It’s also very well sound insulated, to the extent that I might be a bit miffed if I was in charge of security and read that “because of the characteristic F1 sound [Project Ones] are hard to keep from the public”.
Still – looks great, I think, though I’m curious as to why you’d shout about it now. Except that, earlier this week, AMG honcho Tobias Moers told reporters that development of the Project One was “back on track”, so perhaps it wasn’t for a while, but now that it is, they’d like to reassure us. Anyway, I wonder how fast it’ll go around the… oh, never mind.