The Honda Civic Type R Is Once Again the Front-Drive Nürburgring Champ

The new Honda Civic Type R is one of the all-time great hot hatches and one of the fastest too. Honda announced Wednesday night it's claimed the front-wheel-drive Nürburgring record with the FL5-generation Civic Type R, setting a 7:44.881 around the famous Nordschleife. This dethrones the previous champ, the Renault Mégane R.S. Trophy-R, which officially set a 7:45.39 back in 2019.

Now, if you're a big Civic Type R fan, you may remember that the old FK8-generation set a 7:43.8 back in 2017. Yet, the new model is still considered faster. The reason is that in 2019, the Nürburgring instituted a set of guidelines for lap records that required the time to be measured along the complete 12.93-mile Nordschleife. Beforehand, the track itself had nothing officially to do with lap times, and most people measured a lap of the Nordschleife excluding the short front straight, which cut a little over a tenth of a mile to the time. The old Type R's 7:43.8 was measured along the 12.8-mile version of the circuit, while the new Type R's time reflects the 12.93-mile version of the track.

Some automakers, like Porsche and Mercedes-AMG, release both 12.8- and 12.93-mile times so enthusiasts can draw a comparison between records set before 2019 and those set after. Honda hasn't done that here, but based on watching the video of the lap, it appears that it took roughly 5.2 seconds to cover the extra distance. If we accept this admittedly rough estimation, we can say the Type R covered the 12.8 miles in around 7:39.681, or a little over four seconds faster than its predecessor.