Currently reading: Nurburgring lap time record competition proposed by James Glickenhaus
Lamborghini is the latest manufacturer to set an unverified Nürburgring record; Glickenhaus wants a "Road Cup" competition to award an official fastest lap

James Glickenhaus, the wealthy American who recently announced he plans to build a road-legal version of his Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus SCG 003 race car, has also told Autocar that he wants to launch a “Road Cup” competition at the Nürburgring Nordschliefe to discover which road-legal car is really quickest around there.

Annoyed by unverified manufacturer lap times, most recently Lamborghini’s claim that the Huracán Performante has posted a 6:52 time of the 12.7-mile circuit, Glickenhaus is proposing a competition to be run as part of the Nürburgring 24 Hour race (N24), with road-legal cars having to drive from Cologne, Germany to the Nürburgring on the same set of tyres that they then set a lap time on.

Glickenhaus himself admits that this may sound mad, and also that the Nürburgring authorities haven’t agreed to his idea yet. “They’re reading about it in the press,” he told Autocar at the Geneva show, “they’re going to be like 'what the hell is Jim doing?'”

Yet Glickenhaus has form here – he already endows a cup and prize that’s awarded to the fastest-qualifying car at the N24 race, and he’s already spent many millions of dollars developing and racing both the Ferrari P4/5 by Pininfarina and, more recently, his own SCG 003.

He’s also adamant that his newly-announced Stradale road-legal version, which will be limited to a run of three customer cars and which will cost $1.8m, will prove to be the fastest car around the Nürburgring.

“We know its [race] sister can do a 6:20 lap,” he told us. “It did that with 580hp, 100kg more downforce and half a g more lateral cornering ability. But this car weighs the same, has 300bhp and 250lb ft more.

"On race tyres it would be faster than the race car, but on road tyres it will be about 30sec per lap slower, so around a 6:40. That’s as fast as anyone’s going to go.”

Even if Glickenhaus gets his plan approved, we’ll have to wait until next year to see it. “My idea is to let them yell and scream,” says Glickenhaus of the N24 organisers.

“Then they’ll get over that and we’ll come back and race at the Nürburgring for next year. We’re going to do it.”

If he manages it, we’ll be there.

Advertisement

Read our review

Car review

Junior supercar shows what it can do with a conventional (better) steering set-up

Mike Duff

Mike Duff
Title: Contributing editor

Mike has been writing about cars for more than 25 years, having defected from radio journalism to follow his passion. He has been a contributor to Autocar since 2004, and is a former editor of the Autocar website. 

Mike joined Autocar full-time in 2007, first as features editor before taking the reins at autocar.co.uk. Being in charge of the video strategy at the time saw him create our long running “will it drift?” series. For which he apologies.

He specialises in adventurous drive stories, many in unlikely places. He once drove to Serbia to visit the Zastava factory, took a £1500 Mercedes W124 E-Class to Berlin to meet some of its taxi siblings and did Scotland’s North Coast 500 in a Porsche Boxster during a winter storm. He also seems to be a hypercar magnet, having driven such exotics as the Koenigsegg One:1, Lamborghini SCV12, Lotus Evija and Pagani Huayra R.

Join the debate

Comments
7
Add a comment…
5wheels 14 March 2017

driver differences

No matter what the car - unless you use the same driver for each then its not going to be an equal test. That makes the likes of you and me smile because all these driverless plastic mobiles are pushed tp the nether regions of our automotive brains and thrills
eseaton 9 March 2017

I utterly detest the ongoing

I utterly detest the ongoing interest in road car times around the ring. It is just tediously irrelevant, and indeed counter-productive to what makes a car enjoyable to drive on the road. It is as absurd as judging a musical instrument on how loud it is, or a picture on how big it is. It is just not relevant.
275not599 10 March 2017

What Eseaton said

Like!
James Dene 9 March 2017

Tyres

The article draws attention to the tyres fitted to the car with 30 seconds the difference between a race tyre and a road tyre, apparently. This is an astonishing fact given how little we know about tyres and other prep enjoyed by the various 'fastest' contenders. I enjoyed the Lambo video, although I now realise how little we know about the vehicle involved. Was the car as a customer might drive it away from a showroom? If it wasn't, then the whole thing is a fraud.