Ford has just made history with the Mustang GTD, now the fastest North American production vehicle on the Nürburgring. With an impressive time of 6 minutes 57.685 seconds, it beats the Dodge Viper ACR by 4.3 seconds.
It is only the sixth production car to complete the legendary 20.8 km track in less than seven minutes.
A discreet, but significant victory
The record lap was achieved on August 7, 2024, but Ford only revealed the news recently. Multimatic Motorsports driver Dirk Müller was in charge, concluding two years of intensive development, testing and simulations.
Ford promises a full video of the lap soon, but for now, a short documentary reveals the challenges of a sub-seven-minute lap. In particular, we can see the Mustang GTD reaching an impressive speed of 301 km/h on the long straight of the circuit.
Compete with the great legends
The Mustang GTD has outperformed prestigious models such as the Lamborghini Aventador SuperVeloce and the Ferrari 296 GTB, and even equals the Porsche 918 Spyder. However, it remains behind the Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series, which holds the record for front-engined cars with a time of 6 minutes 43.61 seconds, and far behind the Mercedes-AMG One, which set the all-time mark for cars production with a lap of 6 minutes 29.09 seconds in 2020.
The promising future of the Mustang GTD
Despite this achievement, Ford does not intend to stop there. Company boss Jim Farley has promised that the GTD will return to the Nürburgring in 2025 to try to improve its time.
“The team behind Mustang GTD leveraged decades of track experience to design a car capable of competing with the world's best super cars. We're proud to be the first American manufacturer to go under seven minutes at the Nürburgring, but we're not satisfied. We know GTD still has potential. »
– Jim Farley, PDG de Ford
Original content from auto123.
