1,063-HP Mercedes-AMG ONE Sets New Nurburgring Record, Laps It in 395 Seconds

For years and years, car manufacturers have used the Green Hell as a benchmark for their fast cars. We've seen an endless stream of record attempts, not all of which were successful. With Corvette Month running here on autoevolution, we've set out to test several 'Vettes out on the track as well.

But a virtual lap will never be as exciting, memorable, or significant as the real deal. For most people, chances of going for a drive around the legendary circuit this year are quite dim. But while they wait for 2023, there is plenty of inspirational content online to look at.

Setting a record at the Nürburgring is not just a walk in the park. You need multiple ingredients to make it happen: the right vehicle, driver, track conditions, and ideally no traffic.

Just last year we interviewed a young German motorcycle rider by the name of Paul Löhmer, who had set a fast Bridge-to-Gantry lap of 7:20 on his Suzuki GSX-R1000. He only needed to improve that lap by about 11 seconds to beat the previous record, which had been set by Andy Carlile. But the trouble is, he has to settle for dealing with traffic while doing that.

For big companies such as Porsche or Mercedes-AMG, that is not something they need to be worried about. Because they can simply rent the track all for themselves, although that won't come cheap at all.

About 14 months ago, Porsche announced that Lars Kern had driven the 911 GT2 RS MR to a fast lap of 6:43. Of course, some argued that this was not entirely a production vehicle, but it was also noted that the Manthey Racing upgrades were part of an OEM kit.

Porsche had bested their rivals by about five seconds, as the Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series had set the previous 6:48 record. Maro Engel had been the driver behind the wheel for that result in November 2020, and you'll often find his name associated with both the car manufacturer and the famous racetrack as well. In 2018 he drove the Mercedes-AMG GT R Pro to a fast lap of 7:04, and he has been racing for over 20 years now in various championships across the world.

So it comes as no surprise that he was summoned to take part in the most recent test. We've been suspecting that the Mercedes-AMG ONE would set a new record around the Green Hell for some time now, but it was difficult to predict how much higher it would set the bar once it did that.

There have been several official videos showcasing how fast the One is compared to the GT Black Series, and that only added to the anticipation. Frankly, given its F1-derived technology and impressive performance figures, we were hoping for something close to six minutes flat.

Even so, it would have been much slower than the true king of the Nürburgring, the Porsche 919 Hybrid Evo. But with a lap time of close to six minutes, it would have been as fast as the Volkswagen ID.R. Today we received the official press release from Mercedes-Benz, and along with it the onboard video of Maro Engel's fast lap. At first, we were slightly disappointed to see it stopped the watch at 6:35.183 but then we looked at the whole thing in more detail.

The Green Hell is a 12.944 miles (20.832 km) long track, with over 1,000 feet (304 meters) of elevation change from its lowers to highest points. You could have perfect track conditions in one part of it, and terrible ones in the middle. And that seems to be the case for this Production Car record lap too. It seems that there was only enough time for four laps in total, which is not nearly enough for an undertaking of this scale.

Then, you can notice that there are plenty of areas where the surface is still damp. That means the driver has to go off-throttle and even off-line to avoid a potential crash. All these factors add up, and we can't help but wonder why Mercedes-AMG didn't wait until spring for a faster attempt. Given the right amount of preparation time and optimal track conditions, this could have been a 6:20 lap instead. Perhaps this was just an appetizer for what's coming next, and there's only one question left: how long will it take for someone else to go beat this record?