It was already known that the Lotus 3-Eleven is the fastest model ever developed by probably the most revered British sports car manufacturer in history. The Norfolk-based company may be owned by Proton of Malaysia, but Lotus did a great job with the track-oriented 3-Eleven. A 7-minute 6-second lap on the Nurburgring is the proof we have been waiting for.
Let that lap time slip in. 7 minutes and 6 seconds. Ladies and gentlemen, the Lotus 3-Eleven is faster than the Nissan GT-R Nismo (7:08) around the Green Hell, but not quite as fast as the Lamborghini Aventador LP 750-4 SuperVeloce (6:59), Porsche 918 Spyder (6:57), Radical SR8 (6:56) and the almighty Radical SR8LM (6:48; the current record holder).
Marc Basseng, the driver of the Lotus weapon of mass distraction, declared that the lap "was proven in the sector times set and I’m sure, with the track completely to itself, the car could push towards a 7min flat lap time.”
Let's give Mr. Basseng a round of applause. But wait, hold on a second. There's something that needs to be mentioned. In the attached press release, there's a line that reads: "By combining the quickest sector times achieved during the fastest 2 laps on the “Sport Auto” magazine lap configuration, a total lap time of 7 minutes 06 seconds was recorded by the vehicle’s data logging acquisition system." Boo and hiss!
We would refrain from calling this cheating, but still, it would've been fair play for Lotus to have set the 7m06s lap time in one go. Clipping and combining the best sector times isn't an honorable thing to do, but we sort of understand why Lotus resorted to this trick – those senseless Nurburgring speed limits!
But then again, it's not senseless to believe that the Lotus 3-Eleven is capable of performing a 7m06 lap from start to finish in ideal conditions. After all, we're talking about a sub-900 kg (2,000 lbs) sports car propelled by a 450 horsepower engine. Considering that R&D on the 3-Eleven is still ongoing, Lotus engineers are working hard at fine-tuning this track-oriented mind-bender to unleash its full potential.
The quickest, most powerful production Lotus road car ever made is slated to start production in February 2016. Only 311 examples of the breed will be made, with prices starting at £82,000 for the Road version and £115,200 in Race guise. That'll be $125,995 and $177,005 according to current exchange rates.
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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