American Nürburgring King

Car and Driver magazine loves to test cars via something they called “The Lightning Lap”. Using the “Grand West Course” at the Virginia International Speedway, considered as “America’s Nürburgring”, the 4.1-mile, 28 turn course is a perfect place to test cars capabilities.

Ford was riding high earlier this month when Car and Driver tested the $450,000 Ford GT and bumped the Porsche 918 from the top of the record board by turning in a very impressive time of 2:43.0. Ford than reported that team driver Billy Johnson was able to turn in a time of 2:38.62!

American Nurburgring King By Will Pittenger – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

But as they say, all good things must end. Nobody expected the end to come so quickly though and from a $118,900 (plus options) American car! Well, just this week the new 2019 Corvette ZR1 knocked the GT off the podium with a time of 2.37.25 while performing routine validation testing, not as an attempt to set a new lap record! The ZR1’s record was set, not by one of the top Corvette Team drivers, but rather by Chevy’s in-house test driver and engineer Jim Mero in an automatic Coupe. You can watch the run here.