As they say, records are meant to be broken. Nurburgring track times have always been a point of contention with the performance manufacturers. Porsche in particular has been voracious about maintaining its dominance at the track. After a spat with Nissan (who made a run for it with the GT-R) over who was the top dog, Porsche set the record in April 2010 with the 911 GT2 RS at 7 minutes and 18 seconds. That record stood until this month when Lexus shaved four seconds off that time, setting a new record with the LFA Nurburgring Edition. It was manufacturer-sponsored effort, with race driver Akida Iida behind the wheel. While Porsche’s record stood for over a year, Lexus will have to do with just a few weeks.
The rabble rousers at Dodge decided to make hay by taking the street-legal 2010 Viper SRT10 ACR badk to track. While it is now discontinued, two new models were selected from dealer Tomball Dodge’s showroom in Tomball, Texas. Dodge previously took to the track with a 2008 model Viper SRT-10 ACR, and posted a time of 7:22.10.
The 2010 model features a few minor changes, like an updated aerodynamics kit and a shorter final drive ratio of from 0.74 to 0.80. With the updated model, Dodge set a new record of 7:12.13, 10 seconds faster than in 2008 and good enough to beat the Lexus record. The record is for a mainstream production manufacturer vehicle; as far as publicly available vehicles in general cars from Gumpert and Radical place higher.
However, Dodge can legitimately say they beat the LFA Nurburgring’s time. Lexus still has the fastest Nurburgring vehicle that is available for sale though. So there you have it Porsche, that’s the new standard. With the standard 911 cutting 13 seconds off the previous generation’s lap time, something tells us future GT3 and GT2 models will be up to the challenge. Check out a video of Dodge’s record-breaking run below.
