You may read around the interwebz that the McLaren P1 hypercar has set a blistering Nürburgring lap time of 6 minutes 33.26 seconds.
If it were true that would be an astonishing time. And who knows, perhaps it may well be the case. Certainly, the P1 and its remarkable 908hp petrol-electric hybrid drivetrain will be bloody quick. But that quick?
Anyway, to explain the graphic you see above, which is official and it is from McLaren China. However, it’s not a claimed lap time for the P1 around the Ring. Rather, McLaren explained to Jalopnik that:
The image in question was included on a slide which was part of a mood board to inspire the design team for the McLaren P1™, and not the engineers, who are working to a target time of ‘merely’ sub-7 minutes.
Nürburgring lap times are all a bit of theatre in any case, there’s no guidelines or official sanctioning body to verify the times claimed by manufacturers. As a result the holder of the fastest production car around the Nordschleife provides some good pub debate but not much more.
At the moment the title of fastest production/street legal car around the Green Hell is claimed by the V8 powered Radical SR8LM (6:48), which was set in 2009.
In 2010 a non-street legal Pagani Zonda R lapped the Ring in 6:47.50.
The fastest ever time set on the Nordschleife is acknowledged as Stefan Bellof’s 6:11 lap set during qualifying for the 1983 1000km race. He was driving a Porsche 956. It’s still the only recorded lap to have an average speed of over 200km/h.
[Source: Jalopnik]