You knew it was coming, didn’t you? Ford has been teasing the Mustang GTD‘s lap at the Nürburgring for weeks, hinting that it would soon become the first car built by an American manufacturer to run the Green Hell in under seven minutes. Today, the Blue Oval officially announced that the 815-horsepower Mustang GTD conquered the Nordschleife in 6:57.685. That’s real darn fast.
Only five production cars have set a faster lap at the Nürburgring, and none of them were American. The Dodge Viper ACR previously held the benchmark at 7:01.30, standing as the Stars and Stripes’ best effort for seven years. And according to Ford CEO Jim Farley, the Mustang GTD has more to give.
“The team behind Mustang GTD took what we’ve learned from decades on the track and engineered a Mustang that can compete with the world’s best supercars,” Farley explained. “We’re proud to be the first American automaker with a car that can lap the Nürburgring in under seven minutes, but we aren’t satisfied. We know there’s much more time to find with Mustang GTD. We’ll be back.”
We wrote in October that Ford was battling nasty weather conditions the whole time it was at the Nürburgring. While you can always wait for another day, scheduling and logistics aren’t that simple when you’re renting out the entire track and flying in a whole crew to run the car. Dirk Muller, the Le Mans winner who piloted the Mustang GTD, was just one member of the personnel present during the run. If I had to guess, weather is the reason the Blue Oval didn’t push even further into the six-minute range.
The Nürburgring Nordschleife is trying enough at 12.9 miles long with 73—count ’em, 73—turns. They call it the Green Hell for a reason and as oversaturated as we’ve become with Nürburgring-related news, you can’t discredit the challenge of blitzing such a wild track in a car with speed to kill. Sure, that’s the whole point of the $325,000+ Mustang GTD, but I doubt any customer will ever come within shouting distance of Muller’s mark.
Only one American car on the horizon stands a chance of knocking the Mustang GTD off its throne, and that’s the Chevy Corvette ZR1. The Vette has more grunt than its rival, with 1,064 hp from its twin-turbo 5.5-liter V8, and it’s likely to be a whole lot less expensive. Still, it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison. The whole point of the Mustang GTD is to outgun its racing counterpart with no power or active aero limitations, and its chassis and suspension are seriously massaged by Multimatic. It shares very little with a regular Mustang underneath, and that’s what makes it so extreme.
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