Oh, the fabled Nürburgring (Nordschleife) and its legendary old track dubbed the Green Hell. Riddled with fame and controversy around the world’s record lap times!
So, the Nordschleife is both simple and complicated at the same time. Whoever conquers its technical course the fastest, gets the historic laurels. But there are issues with the various track layouts (Bridge to Gantry, full lap, etc.) as well as the timing entities. Alas, there are some ultimate lap record times.
Currently, as far as street-legal production cars are concerned, the best of the best is represented by the Porsche 911 GT2 RS MR (Manthey Racing) – an official attempt by Porsche with the sports car featuring the OEM Manthey performance kit. And the time posted by Lars Kern stands at precisely 6:38.835.
Meanwhile, the second best is none other than Mercedes-AMG’s GT Black Series. It too, was an official Green Hell lap record attempt from Mercedes, with Maro Engel at the helm, and finishing the shorter version of the course in 6:43.616. Meanwhile, the 20,832-meter lap was done in 6:43.3 and 6:48.047 by the 911 and GT, respectively.
Thus, it is only natural that Mercedes-AMG might want to reclaim the coveted title. And they might have as well already done it – only they are not willing to share all the goodies with us. At least not yet because the marketing department wanted some additional spotlight time for the company’s Mercedes-AMG ONE plug-in hybrid hypercar before the official timing was dissected.
As such, all we have for now are some cute Nürburgring Nordschleife pictures with the Mercedes-AMG ONE on the track, plus a declaration of interest. “It started with a dream. Now we’re here. Are you ready for a new milestone? Time to witness something big that we all have been waiting for” reads the description on social media. Yes, Mercedes-AMG, we are ready – bring it on!
Aurel has aimed high all his life (literally, at 16 he was flying gliders all by himself) so in 2006 he switched careers and got hired as a writer at his favorite magazine. Since then, his work has been published both by print and online outlets, most recently right here, on autoevolution. Full profile
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