Autocar - First for car news and reviews

British sports car company Ultima claims to have beaten the Top Gear lap record held by Michael Schumacher in a £1million track day Ferrari FXX.

In an unofficial attempt Ultima booked out the test track and completed a circuit in a GTR720 road car in 1min 9.9sec, almost a second quicker than the Ferrari’s 1min 10.7sec lap.

The BBC is understood to have repeatedly denied offers to test the Ultima on Top Gear saying the car would not clear a speed hump, which Ultima denies.

"W...Read the full article

So does this mean the Ultima is as fast as the Carparo T1? I wouldn't think the ultima could accelerate, brake or corner at anything like the speed a T1 could.

Also its interesting then that Farrari could have made the FXX faster by just leaving out all the technical wizadry.

 Hold your horses, i reckon the time came from setup. Ultima spent a day at the track to get that time. Schumacher would have needed to have spent a day on it also and a Ferrari pit team to do all the setup changes to dial in the car to get a time, which might not have happened or felt the need to do once they had the time they got. Even an F1 car that arrives for a weekend grand prix has to spend quite a bit of time in practice to get the setup right even on circuits they know very well, sometimes even over 2 days they stil havent got it right for the race. so i think at this level of performance on supercars, its down to track time and engineers and support crews.

 

Credit where credit is due, they beat Schumacher’s time in a £1million track day Ferrari FXX in a track day car most could afford if they were into that sort of thing; impressive.

The Lap

Schumacher was driving that black FXX?

Broom Broom:

Schumacher was driving that black FXX?

He was the stand in Stig when they set the FXX lap time on Top Gear.

Extraordinary commitment at the follow through, the fastest I've ever seen a car go round there.

Those that say it was all down to set up should realise that Ferrari didn't simply pull an FXX out of a crate and send Schumacher to the start line, they would have arrived with an army of technicians who would've spent the day fettling the thing.

 I love a giant killer.

 They're right about the speed bumps. There's a guy around the corner from me who has one. And there's at least 3 speed humps between him and any public road.

I've been out in an Ultima with Ted Marlow (the owner of the company) driving. Jesus, they're bloody fast. He told me then (this was two years ago) that they had the unofficial lap record but that TG had refused to invite them officially. This isn't news.

If I wasn't so incompetent, I'd have a stab at building an Ultima.

<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/vOt-zUuWFOM">http://www.youtube.com/v/vOt-zUuWFOM</a></p>

View original media here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOt-zUuWFOM

 

Well done Ultima, lots of good videos on Youtube, including the amazing 0-100-0 record.

I can't understand why the BBC are being so dismissive; perhaps someone who has built a GTR could offer their car to The Stig for a "one off lap"? (and bring their own speed bumps, obviously).