To accompany the official release of the 2014 Nissan GT-R Nismo, Nissan announced an official Nurburgring lap time of 7 minutes 8.679 seconds. To put this into comparison, the Porsche 911 GT2 RS is 10 seconds slower, the previous fastest Nissan GT-R managed a time that is 11 seconds slower!
[youtube]http://youtu.be/sNAT_c3CLHw[/youtube]
The lap time was recorded by Michael Krumm on 30 September 2013, a Nissan racing pilot and test-driver, behind the wheel of a 2014 Nissan GT-R Nismo. The car was specced with what Nissan refer to as “track options”. These include weight reduction, aerodynamic optimisation and suspension tuning.
The updated Nissan GT-R will be available in Japan from December, and in the US and Europe in early 2014. The GT-R Nismo will go on sale in Japan from February 2014 and later in the same year in Europe and the US.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvyRToPYPr0[/youtube]
Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn says:
“With this lap time, we can authoritatively say that the 2014 Nissan GT-R Nismo* holds the volume production car lap record at the Nordschliefe, which is the gold standard of high performance achievement.”
Michael Krumm said:
“We had a fantastic time attacking the Nürburgring. I had so much fun out there. The car gave me so much confidence, but also it is really enjoyable. The Nissan GT-R Nismo* is a really engaging, rewarding car and, of course, super-super-fast.”
For their attempt Nissan gathered Infiniti Red Bull third driver Sébastien Buemi, NISMO global brand ambassador and racer Michael Krumm, German touring car (and ‘Ring) veteran Armin Hahne, and a Japanese driver, Tetsuya Tanaka, an experienced ‘Ring hand, himself.
Each driver completed two laps. Sébastien Buemi went first and managed a 7:12 on his first lap. He then stopped to take some fuel out to reduce the weight. On his way to a predicted 7:10, on the back straight he started to run out of fuel. Armin Hahne and Tetsuya Tanaka followed before Michael Krumm set a first lap time of 7:10 followed by the record 7:08.679.