42 replies to this topic

[owenmahamilton]

Mercedes AMG broke the Nordschleife Production Car Lap Record by eight seconds with their AMG One Hypercar with the circuit in not the best state, I would think they might go back again when the circuit is dry and in better condition.

 

Edited by owenmahamilton, 10 November 2022 - 21:41.

[William Hunt]

who's in the car?

[owenmahamilton]

who's in the car?

 

Mercedes DTM driver Maro Engel.

[milestone 11]

Fabulous!

[ray b]

they may sell a few of those

 

BUT

 

THAT IS NOT A PRODUCTION CAR AMG 1

 

THAT IS A HALO EGO STROKE LOOK AT US

[Burtros]

Such a satisfying lap to watch. Brilliant.

[SwedeForceOne]

Will be fun to see when the AM Valkyrie beats this time, at least if weight to hp is anything to go by (1,1 vs 1,6 in favor of the AM).

[New Britain]

Originally M-B simulated a sub-6:11 (Bellof) lap time on road-legal tyres.

[Chick0]

Originally M-B simulated a sub-6:11 (Bellof) lap time on road-legal tyres.

 

No chance they are getting even close to a 6:11.    Merc originally said this car would be around 1200kg, they are now saying its 1700kg ( expect that to be a good bit more for real life when a production model is independently weighed).   

[Beri]

No chance they are getting even close to a 6:11.    Merc originally said this car would be around 1200kg, they are now saying its 1700kg ( expect that to be a good bit more for real life when a production model is independently weighed).

 

It is very much possible one day. Perhaps not with the current spec or with Mercedes. But one day there will be a car that does it in 6.11. And if Mercedes themselves have simulated a sub 6.20, it is very much possible to break the all time record. But to be fair, the track now is some 200 meters shorter than the one Bellof drove at. So to me, Bellof's record will always stand.

[Collombin]

But to be fair, the track now is some 200 meters shorter than the one Bellof drove at. So to me, Bellof's record will always stand.

So for how many years did the track exist in the configuration used in 1983? If not many, then I don't really see the continuing obsession with the Bellof record.

[gillesfan76]

Quick lap, and strangely it didn’t even look that quick. I would expect the Valkyrie to trash that time though. That car is light and looks like an aero beast.

[d246]

Wonder what time the McMurtry Spéirling would do.

[Victor_RO]

But to be fair, the track now is some 200 meters shorter than the one Bellof drove at. So to me, Bellof's record will always stand.

 

It isn't, the Nordschleife loop on its own is still 20.832 km and has been since 1983.

[owenmahamilton]

Wonder what time the McMurtry Spéirling would do.

 

I wonder if it could even do a full lap at high speed before its battery runs out.

Edited by owenmahamilton, 11 November 2022 - 11:09.

[BobbyRicky]

 

 

 

It is very much possible one day. Perhaps not with the current spec or with Mercedes. But one day there will be a car that does it in 6.11. And if Mercedes themselves have simulated a sub 6.20, it is very much possible to break the all time record. But to be fair, the track now is some 200 meters shorter than the one Bellof drove at. So to me, Bellof's record will always stand.

 

 

The outright-record has been beaten twice by now hasnt it? By that electric VW and that Porsche-monster if i remember correctly.

In a race like Bellof? Not gonna happen.

[Victor_RO]

The outright-record has been beaten twice by now hasnt it? By that electric VW and that Porsche-monster if i remember correctly.

In a race like Bellof? Not gonna happen.

 

Yes, but since the discussion started from the AMG One, the question here is about a road-registered car beating the 6:11.

 

In a race - we can only go by unofficial/approximate timing since the Nordschleife itself isn't used on its own, but current-gen GT3 cars can probably do 6:30-ish around the Nordschleife in race trim (with quali or super-quick race laps in the 8:10-8:15 bracket on Nordschleife + GP track).

[PayasYouRace]

So for how many years did the track exist in the configuration used in 1983? If not many, then I don't really see the continuing obsession with the Bellof record.

One. The old pits and loop were demolished at the end of 1982 and the GP track ready for 1984.

[PayasYouRace]

But to be fair, the track now is some 200 meters shorter than the one Bellof drove at. So to me, Bellof's record will always stand.

Where did those 200m disappear to? I though the 1983 layout was essentially the same as what’s used for this type of thing now, missing out the GP circuit.

[Victor_RO]

Where did those 200m disappear to? I though the 1983 layout was essentially the same as what’s used for this type of thing now, missing out the GP circuit.

 

They haven't. Only changes from 1983 to present day have been resurfacing and a couple of smoothed crests after a GT3 car vaulted the barriers in early 2015.

[Nathan]

they may sell a few of those

 

BUT

 

THAT IS NOT A PRODUCTION CAR AMG 1

 

THAT IS A HALO EGO STROKE LOOK AT US

 

 

mmmm, OK Ray.  Let's get you back to the dining room for Mastermind re-runs now.

[Collombin]

In a race like Bellof? Not gonna happen.

Bellof's time was not done in the race. His huge crash in the race was as a result of going unnecessarily fast though.

[Ivanhoe]

Where did those 200m disappear to? I though the 1983 layout was essentially the same as what’s used for this type of thing now, missing out the GP circuit.

 

They haven't. Only changes from 1983 to present day have been resurfacing and a couple of smoothed crests after a GT3 car vaulted the barriers in early 2015.

I think Beri refers to this

 

Record runs are now measured on the full Nordschleife that is 20.832 km long. Earlier, in many occasions, the time was started after the T13 grand stand and stopped before T13 giving the track length of 20.600 km.

https://www.stuttcar...eife-lap-times/

[PayasYouRace]

Ok. Have record runs always been flying laps too? If they’re from a standing start that’s another reason we can’t compare them to the 1983 lap record.

[New Britain]

Where did those 200m disappear to? I though the 1983 layout was essentially the same as what’s used for this type of thing now, missing out the GP circuit.

At the start of the lap there is a little straight - it is the place where you go from the GP circuit onto the Nordschleife. (At the end of that little straight there is a sharp left and then you descend towards the twisty bits. The sharp left used to be called 'T13' but was recently renamed 'Sabine Schmitz Kurve'.)

Along that little straight, but on the opposite side from the entrance from GP, is a parking/paddock area. It is used by the manufacturers of the Industry Pool. There is an access gate from that parking area to the circuit.

When the Industry Pool drivers do their timed laps, in order to save having to do an extra lap following a 'completed' lap, they set up their timing equipment such that the timed start of the lap is slightly beyond the gate and the timed end of the lap is shortly before the gate. Once the lap has been timed 'complete', they can drive their cars directly back into the parking area.

Beri maybe correct that, for 'record runs', they now do the full lap - I could not say - but for many years it was excluded.

 

Obviously it depends on the car, but as a rule I have always thought that the missing stretch takes about 4 seconds to traverse.

[New Britain]

No chance they are getting even close to a 6:11.    Merc originally said this car would be around 1200kg, they are now saying its 1700kg ( expect that to be a good bit more for real life when a production model is independently weighed).   

Yes, quite true. I gather that the Valkyrie turned into something of a porker as well - will be interesting to compare its time with that of the One, on equivalent tyres and in the same track conditions.

[BobbyRicky]

Bellof's time was not done in the race. His huge crash in the race was as a result of going unnecessarily fast though.

 

I know. I worded that poorly. What i meant was sanctioned race-event/weekend/rawe ceek.

 

 

Yes, but since the discussion started from the AMG One, the question here is about a road-registered car beating the 6:11.

 

In a race - we can only go by unofficial/approximate timing since the Nordschleife itself isn't used on its own, but current-gen GT3 cars can probably do 6:30-ish around the Nordschleife in race trim (with quali or super-quick race laps in the 8:10-8:15 bracket on Nordschleife + GP track).

 

If we are speaking about road-legal cars below 6:11 someone should ask Eric Comas if he doesnt want to have a go at it in his now road-legal R390. That would be cool to see.

[Silberpfeil]

For a car whose development team was AMG‘s equivalent of a penal colony (or so the grapevine goes), that‘s not bad at all. Although it probably helps that Engel knows the Nordschleife extremely well.

[Laptom]

Was the road car record not a Porsche 911 GT2? And is the One beating this record?

[Pieter]

Perhaps they'll try again next spring. When the track is drier and no oil at Kesselchen. 

[Beri]

They haven't. Only changes from 1983 to present day have been resurfacing and a couple of smoothed crests after a GT3 car vaulted the barriers in early 2015.

Not correct. I can't find images online, but I am pretty sure that there is a map at the Ring itself showing the configuration that Bellof drove. Which has a sort of extra loop/corner at the place where the Grand Prix track nowadays connect with the Nordschleife. I believe this was due to the extension/addition of the new track that was being built. It was temporary, as pointed out above as well, but it was there none the less. About 200 meters longer the lap was that Bellof did.

[New Britain]

Not correct. I can't find images online, but I am pretty sure that there is a map at the Ring itself showing the configuration that Bellof drove. Which has a sort of extra loop/corner at the place where the Grand Prix track nowadays connect with the Nordschleife. I believe this was due to the extension/addition of the new track that was being built. It was temporary, as pointed out above as well, but it was there none the less. About 200 meters longer the lap was that Bellof did.

I'm not saying that you're wrong, my friend, but I learned the circuit from the Duke Video 'In Car 956', which was filmed the same weekend that Bellof set the record. I have not seen the video in years, but I certainly do not remember an extra corner or loop in that section.

 

When you think about the infrastructure in that section of the circuit, towards the end of the little straight (just past the gate for the Industry Pool paddock, before the sharp left of Sabine's Kurve), the circuit passes across a bridge, with a local public road going through the underpass below. That local road has been there since before the original circuit was built in '27, so would they have moved the bridge? I think that bit of the circuit has always been there, which shrinks the scope for any possible differences in the circuit between '83 and today.

 

There is no guarantee that the following maps are accurate, but this supposedly shows the circuit as of 1982:

https://en.wikipedia...ordschleife.svg

 

If that was the layout for Bellof in 1983, at the top of Hohenrain - relative to how the circuit is today - he would have had a very tight (<90°) right-hander, then an extra left-hander and an extra right-hander before getting back on today's circuit and crossing that bridge over the public road. That would not have added any distance to the lap but would have slowed him down by several seconds relative to today's circuit. I can't see its happening.

The alternative scenario would in theory be if the link roads to, and the top section of, the GP circuit had been in place in '83, and, instead of turning right at the top of Hohenrain, they entered the link road to the GP circuit, then took a super-tight right onto the top of the GP (Coca-Cola Kurve), anti-clockwise, and then took the other link road back onto the circuit, re-entering before the bridge. That would have added the 200 metres of which you speak but would also have added many seconds to a lap time.

 

This is supposedly the circuit as of 1983, when Bellof did his 6:11:

https://commons.wiki...rgring-1983.svg

That layout is the same as today.

 

In 2019 when Timo broke the record, there was no mention of the circuit having been longer for Bellof. Considering that they were both driving for Porsche, and Timo is a humble guy, I would have expected him to say something if the circuit for his lap had been shorter than Bellof's was. 

 

Tbf, I think that the 'extra' 200 metres are just the difference between the full circuit as it is today and the measured distance when the Industry Pool timing beacons are in use.

 

 

Btw, I love this little anecdote: in 2019 when Timo broke Bellof's 'unbreakable' record, after he did so one of the first people to call him to offer their congratulations was Stefan Bellof's dad. NOW THAT IS CLASS.

[TEHNOS]

https://www.whichcar...ring-lap-record

[New Britain]

https://www.whichcar...ring-lap-record

Interesting. That article states:

 

At the time, the current grand prix circuit was being built. The 1983 circuit used an improvised start/finish loop, robbing the track of running space and trimming the Green Hell’s length by roughly two kilometres to 20.81km. By the time the 1984 season rolled around, the combined layout included the GP circuit, making it 25.96 kilometres in length.

 

That paragraph doesn't really make sense in the context of Bellof's lap record, but there is a reference to what Beri has been saying about a temporary change to the circuit.

I wonder if for 1983 they used the pit garages and paddock of the new circuit? In that case today's link roads could have functioned as the pit road.

[Collombin]

I learned the circuit from the Duke Video 'In Car 956', which was filmed the same weekend that Bellof set the record. I have not seen the video in years, but I certainly do not remember an extra corner or loop in that section

I agree. I remember being so excited about this video that I asked for it as an Xmas pressie but sneakily opened it early to watch the Nurburgring lap, and then re-wrapped it afterwards! It claimed on the back cover that the in-car lap of Bell's was the 5th fastest ever lap of the track, so God knows how fast Ickx was going when he overtook early in the lap and left him for dead. Clearly bull, and the track without that entire south curve section isn't the classic Nordschliefe anyway, although from the blurb you wouldn't know that.

[New Britain]

I agree. I remember being so excited about this video that I asked for it as an Xmas pressie but sneakily opened it early to watch the Nurburgring lap, and then re-wrapped it afterwards! It claimed on the back cover that the in-car lap of Bell's was the 5th fastest ever lap of the track, so God knows how fast Ickx was going when he overtook early in the lap and left him for dead. Clearly bull, and the track without that entire south curve section isn't the classic Nordschliefe anyway, although from the blurb you wouldn't know that.

Yes, and you may recall Bell's comment as Ickx shot past him: 'He's going faster than I am because he doesn't have a camera in his car!'

My recollection is that Bell's lap was many, many seconds off the pace. Perhaps it should have been written that Bell's lap was the fifth-fastest ever driven by a different driver, because surely that weekend Bellof did many laps faster than Bell's in-car lap, plus we had Ickx. In fact, IIRC, the second fastest qualifier that weekend was Mass with a 6:16 - not too shabby in itself.

 

 

Btw, here is a different map of what the circuit was supposedly like in 1983. At the section we have been discussing, it looks like there is a slight, parallel trace, almost like a slip road, which would have neither added distance nor increased the number of bends; no meaningful impact on lap time.

 

https://en.wikipedia...ordschleife.svg

[Victor_RO]

Interesting. That article states:

At the time, the current grand prix circuit was being built. The 1983 circuit used an improvised start/finish loop, robbing the track of running space and trimming the Green Hell’s length by roughly two kilometres to 20.81km. By the time the 1984 season rolled around, the combined layout included the GP circuit, making it 25.96 kilometres in length.

That paragraph doesn't really make sense in the context of Bellof's lap record, but there is a reference to what Beri has been saying about a temporary change to the circuit.
I wonder if for 1983 they used the pit garages and paddock of the new circuit? In that case today's link roads could have functioned as the pit road.

If I remember rightly from the Duke highlights video of the '83 race, the current GP circuit area was all a construction site at the time, and the pitlane used was the one that still exists today before Hatzenbach (and the corner now named after Sabine).

[PayasYouRace]

Ok I understand it now. The layout used in 1983 was the layout still available today, with the link road and small pit lane behind what is now the final turn of the GP layout (I know it as Coca-Cola Kurve). However, for years the production car records left out a short bit of track between where the cars entered the circuit and where they left it.

[stenovitz]

This is sad. I witness alot of millennials BS here.

Please do not ever never again relate the 1983 6:11,13 record to modern Nordschleife lap record hunting. That just reveals utter clueless lack of track history.

Though slopes of the track 2022 compared to 1983 are quite the same, it's two different universes speaking curbes and especially road surface. Timo Bernhard's excellent and mindblowing likewise prototype record in the Porsche 919 Hybrid Evo would be quite much slower than the likewise rekognizable respectfull 5:19,546, but set under much smoother track conditions and much more forgiving curbs.

I was at the track in 1984 and back again in 2010, and though the same slopes and perfect weather conditions, it was like two completely different worlds.

[New Britain]

If I remember rightly from the Duke highlights video of the '83 race, the current GP circuit area was all a construction site at the time, and the pitlane used was the one that still exists today before Hatzenbach (and the corner now named after Sabine).

Yes, that makes sense.

[New Britain]

This is sad. I witness alot of millennials BS here.

Please do not ever never again relate the 1983 6:11,13 record to modern Nordschleife lap record hunting. That just reveals utter clueless lack of track history.

Though slopes of the track 2022 compared to 1983 are quite the same, it's two different universes speaking curbes and especially road surface. Timo Bernhard's excellent and mindblowing likewise prototype record in the Porsche 919 Hybrid Evo would be quite much slower than the likewise rekognizable respectfull 5:19,546, but set under much smoother track conditions and much more forgiving curbs.

I was at the track in 1984 and back again in 2010, and though the same slopes and perfect weather conditions, it was like two completely different worlds.

Who is saying that the circuit is exactly the same? Everyone knows that the circuit has been continually evolved and has gradually been made safer for decades now.

Nobody is suggesting that Timo was as brave/crazy as Stefan Bellof, and whether Timo is as skilled is something that we'll never know.

There is no question that the 919 is a faster racing car than the 956 was.

Timo's lap was nearly 58 seconds - or 15% - quicker than Bellof's was. In racing terms, 15% is absolutely massive. Some of that differential would have come from a quicker circuit, but not all of it.

 

 

Edit - Bellof was driving a 956, not a 962

Edited by New Britain, 12 November 2022 - 12:52.

[stenovitz]

Who is saying that the circuit is exactly the same? Everyone knows that the circuit has been continually evolved and has gradually been made safer for decades now.
Nobody is suggesting that Timo was as brave/crazy as Stefan Bellof, and whether Timo is as skilled is something that we'll never know.
There is no question that the 919 is a faster racing car than the 962 was.
Timo's lap was nearly 58 seconds - or 15% - quicker than Bellof's was. In racing terms, 15% is absolutely massive. Some of that differential would have come from a quicker circuit, but not all of it.

Well, though sadfully no living pictures of the 1983 Rothmans Porsche 956 (note: not the 962, the 956 was even more of a handful behind the wheel) to me Timo Bernhard's lap is maybe just even as astonishing and crazy as Stefan Bellof's ditto. The behind the wheel scenes of Timo Bernhard shows the work of a top racing driver going absolutely to the limits with seemingly blind confidense to the car and track.

To me it's just senseless to make any comparison, since they are two different planets, not only car-wise but especially track-wise too. And the last point is often totally missed when someone is targeting a goal that is not really there any longer.

But with my experience on track from 2010 and onwards, the 'perfect surface' and far more forgiving curbs makes lap records far more comparable, speaking the last decade.
And so but anyway; the
track is under constant change/evolvement. Take for instance the big overhaul and track rebuild a couple of winters ago. Just a detail as the evolved 'dip' before Schwedenkreuz was smoothened (though still a small dip as promised), making the approch totally different. And this was just one section of the 20.832 meters.

Edited by stenovitz, 12 November 2022 - 13:54.

[New Britain]

Well, though sadfully no living pictures of the 1983 Rothmas Porsche 956 (note: not the 962, the 956 was even more of a handful behind the wheel) to me Timo Bernhard's lap is maybe just even as astonishing and crazy as Stefan Bellof's ditto. The behind the wheel scenes of Timo Bernhard shows the work of a top racing driver going absolutely to the limits with seemingly blind confidense to the car and track.

To me it's just senseless to make any comparison, since they are two different planets, not only car-wise but especially track-wise too. And the last point is often totally missed when someone is targeting a goal that is not really there any longer.

But with my experience on track from 2010 and onwards, the 'perfect surface' and far more forgiving curbs makes lap records far more comparable, speaking the last decade.
And so but anyway; the
track is under constant change/evolvement. Take for instance the big overhaul and track rebuild a couple of winters ago. Just a detail as the evolved 'dip' before Schwedenkreuz was smoothened (though still a small dip as promised), making the approch totally different. And this was just one section of the 20.832 meters.

I'd agree with what you say. Also, tyre technology is very far beyond what it was in the '80s.

 

Thanks for catching my typo - '962' should have been '956'.