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A Porsche product chief has accused Nissan of cheating to set the GT-R’s record-breaking lap time around the Nurburgring in April.
Engineers from the German sports car maker have been running tests at the ‘Ring and could not get within 25 seconds of Nissan’s claimed 7:29 second lap time.
“For us, it’s not clear how this time is possible” August Achleitner, product boss for the 911, tol...Read the full article

Wonder how long before the ring ends up getting its own full time adjudicator?

The probability that the GTR that cracked the 7:30 barrier was fettled is quite high, be that tyre or engine mods.  What will be interesting is if Nissan go back with "standard" cars to prove a point!

Didn't the last record Nissan set (when the skyline became the first roadcar to dip under 8 minutes) turn out to have been made by a heavily tweaked, not particularly standard car?  They seem to have a very vague idea of what the phrase 'standard road car' actually means.

You get the impression standard road car means a modified car that is still road legal and outwardly indistinguishable from normal.  Perhaps VW should shoehorn a Veyron engine under the hood of the new Golf GTI?

It always smelled like BS... especially in light of the current article in Evo, where a Zonda F in the hands of a professional 'Ring meister only managed a 7.24 and that weights c.600kg less and has c.200bhp more.

Another thing about the GTR I've never quite fathomed is why it's also so quick in a straight line. GTR's engine "only" has around 475 bhp and the car weighs well over 1700 kilos. Yet it matches or beats a number of lighter competitors with more powerful engines, in acceleration times.

I suspect that Nissan's quoted power output of GTR's engine is well on the conservative side. I wonder if anyone has bench-tested this engine independently.

Isn't this all a little irrelevant? Every test and I do mean every test I have read or watched on motoring programmes the GT-R blitzes whatever Porsche it is pitted against including, in Top Gear, The Carrera GT. Sour grapes perhaps? Porsche are hardly likely to come out and say "yep fair do's this is an awesome car" are they?

Count1999:

"yep fair do's this is an awesome car"

I suspect it is 'awesome', a bit anodyne though? I reckon it could do with a bit more soul. *** video vs. a pdk 997 'S' is one example of something beating it by the way.

It does not surprisee me...they...Nissan....have been doing it for years....and why doesn't anyone make any comments about the awful plastics and boring Japanese interior styling....ah yes becausee loads of advertising money comes in from them, which also explains why everyone tries to love Ford these days. Unfortunately, the days of strong independent car magazines have been taken over by please-the-advertiser editors.

So does this count:

Sabine Schmitz, she of Top Gear fame, and proprietor of Nürburgring Nordschleife driving school broke the lap record last week in a time of 7 minutes 9 seconds in a Porsche 911 GT3.

What a woman!

http://www.autobild.de/artikel/neuer-nordschleifenrekord_788041.html

I think it would be good for Autocar to rolling road every performance car they test and show the figures against the manufacturers claimed figures.

 Anyone remember the press Octavia RS fleet that had closer to 230bhp than the 180bhp?

The famous 150mph E type.

 

I'll bet the sub 7m30s Skyline is packing huge horsepower gains over the standard cars.

Nissan's claim seems plausible given the 911 Turbo managed 7:38 and the GTR seems to beat it in most tests, albeit on tracks that probably have slower average speeds.

 But... the quoted power seems to be someway short of the truth - hang-up from the old Japanese gentleman's power agreement?

 

andrew1965:

boring Japanese interior styling

Could equally say, boring German interior styling....

Nissan originally quoted a ~7:37 time for the NS.  Then, magically, even though Nissan had been running non-stop development with the car against their benchmark (997 turbo), they were able to shave 8s off this time...

I would agree that there are a lot of videos from various mags all pretty much saying that it will beat almost anything else on a track, but physics don't help explain this.

 I was rummaging throug some old Autocar mags, when I came across an article written by Steve Sutcliffe in the 14 May '08 magazine titled "Do the times 'Ring true'.  In this editorial he states:

"More than that, I've driven the latest GT-R and although it is quick with a capital F, I've also driven the new Porsche 911 GT2 (the car whose record the GT-R has supposedly just beaten) and I'm certain that - in standard tune and on factory-fit tyres - it would be quicker than the GT-R around the 'Ring.  Yet Nissan is claiming to have sliced over three seconds from the GT2's time.  One question: what sort of tyres was the car using when it recorded the lap?  Feel free to draw your own conclusion."

 Now, more recently in the video section, he has just shown that it will smoke a Gallardo LP-560...