The Seat Leon Cupra 280—essentially a detuned Audi S3/Golf R—has set a new Nürburgring benchmark for a front-wheel drive production car. The official announcement is being saved for the Geneva Motor Show, but Top Gear has the scoop for now.
As you can see the lap time is 7:58:44, which is pretty bloody quick, obviously. It also cuts almost 10 seconds off the previous best, set by the Renault Megane RS 265 back in 2011.
Seat recorded the lap time late last year with factory touring car driver Jordi Gene at the wheel. His Cupra 280 was fitted with a 6-speed manual gearbox and super sticky (optional) Michelin Pilot Super Sport Cup 2 tyres.
[Source: Top Gear]
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4 replies on “Seat Leon Cupra 280 breaks Ring 8-min barrier”
I’m assuming you mean Pilot Sport Cup 2, which is the semi slick tyre also OEM tyre for GT3, as opposed to Pilot Super Sport which is a road tyre standard on cars like M5 and M135i.
Yes, I believe they are semi slicks.
I wonder what the Megane 265 would do running that sort of tyre. I believe its 8:08 time was set using the RE050A.
Correct thewafflecaust, the Megane did the time in exactly street trim as you would buy the car with Bridgestone RE050A. The SEAT has done this time on semi slick track tyres that will not be sold with the car. So it is a bit misleading for SEAT to claim the record because they are not comparing apples with apples.
The Megane has a far superior front end suspension setup to the SEAT, and even though the SEAT has more HP than the current Megane (and we all know Nürburgring is a total HP circuit) the Megane on the same semi slicks the SEAT ran with would smash the SEAT’s time even with it’s current power levels. If Renault just released an ECU upgrade to give the new facelift Megane 300HP (which is easy) without touching anything else, it would go even faster.
Anyone who knows anything about both cars knows the Renault is still superior.