Renowned for its demanding race track, the Nurburgring is without question the biggest European attraction for petrolheads worldwide, with the German Autobahn network and the Col de Turini mountain pass in France accounting for a close second and third.
But congested stretches of public roads will never offer the full liberty of pedal to the metal action as you can get when driving on the Nordschleife. From 1983 to this day, the hilly circuit measures 20.81 kilometers (12.93 miles) in length and numbers 154 challenging corners.
As of yet, the fastest American car to lap the daunting "Green Hell" is the Dodge Viper SRT-10 ACR, clocked at 7 minutes 12 seconds, followed by the Chevrolet C6 Corvette ZR1, which managed a 7:22.68 lap time.
Unfortunately, GM didn't manage to stretch the legs of the 2014 Chevrolet C7 Corvette Stingray on the German race track as of yet. Until it does just that, the only way to find out if the all-new Vette is any good round the Nordschleife is to check out this recent POV Nurburgring lap onboard the all-new Stingray.
The car featured in the video below is the normal Stingray, without the Z51 Performance Pack. At the beginning of the run, the driver manages to pass a slow Volkswagen Scirocco just by gently feathering the throttle pedal.
When the going gets faster, the seventh-gen Corvette appears to pull quite well on the straights, while staying flat and planted in and out of corners. However, the driver of this car is overtaken by your run-of-the-mill MINI Cooper S at the 2:50 mark, without being able to outrun the British hatchback until the end of the lap.
Naturally, the front-wheel drive MINI offers better traction round the bends, but the C7 driver didn't take the car anywhere near its limits. He could've easily passed the Cooper if he wouldn't have been so afraid of going faster on the straights and tackling the corners just a bit more tail happy.
Nevertheless, the Cooper S doesn't have the same get-up-and-go character as the American sports car, nor the glorious crackling and popping exhaust sounds on the overrun.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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