Lightning Lap 11.5: We Lap the Ford GT at VIR!

The Ford GT’s currency is speed, traded on the exchanges of ACO, WEC, and IMSA. Based on the asking price, its brokers—the 1000 hand-picked applicants who will be allowed to buy the car over the next four years—should have the means to make a track day happen. Whether they choose Virginia International Raceway’s 4.1-mile Grand West Course thrill ride is up to them. For us, it is the obvious choice. We’ve been lapping cars there for more than a decade; we brought the GT to VIR now because we couldn’t secure one to run in 2017’s Lightning Lap 11, and we wanted to make this car part of the official record. The GT at VIR is, in one word, fastest. As in, fastest-lap-we’ve-ever-recorded fastest.

Take the GT anywhere else and you’d miss out on 163.6 mph down the front straight (second-highest all-time speed to the 170.6-mph Porsche 918 Spyder); barreling into the Climbing Esses at 148.0 mph (a new LL record); and a neck workout at 1.17 g’s in Turn 1 brought to you by the entertainment firm of EcoBoost, Michelin, and Multimatic spool-valve dampers. Put it together and you get a 2:43.0 lap, fast enough to dethrone the 918 Spyder as the LL king. And this was accomplished in one day with the car. Given our normal three-day exposure, that time would drop, potentially by entire seconds.

This Ford has a character that isn’t polished smooth like a European exotic or sledgehammer subtle like an American V-8; it’s somewhere in between. The 3.5-liter mill sounds like a truck engine—very Viperish—but spins to redline as if it were cast in the forges of Maranello, not Cleveland. With the carbon-fiber wheels fitted, the steering is very light on-center, and feedback from the otherwise perfectly weighted electrohydraulic steering is amplified. A rather aggressive tire stagger promotes limit understeer, and it’s easy to modulate the car’s cornering attitude with the long-travel throttle.

In its lowered Track mode, the chassis is stricter than a yardstick-wielding nun, who, coincidentally, could measure the driver’s eye height because the roof is now but 41.7 inches off the ground. Headroom is an issue. Driving slumped to avoid contact between helmet and the headliner that hides the steel roll cage isn’t initially comfortable, especially when braking at 1.25 g’s on the back straight accompanied by the thud-sursh as the rear wing forcefully tips itself forward in air-brake mode.

We feared our day was done when we dropped the right-rear wheel over the curbing at the exit of Spiral and destroyed an underbody brake duct; this item passes above the tarmac with a mere 2.7 inches of clearance. But Ford’s mechanic referred to the scoops as “wear items.” He seemed serious and not concerned with the reduced cooling. Then there was an intermittent hydraulic warning that turned out to be nothing but a software glitch. Also, right-hand corners induced fuel starvation. Ford can’t seem to re-create the fuel issue, but on-site corporate talent confirmed the stumbles. So we made sure to lap with a full tank.

Read Our Ford GT Full Test: 0-to-60-MPH Acceleration, Braking Results, and More!

The first time we took a crop of cars to lap VIR, Ford’s ’06 GT was the quickest thing on hand. It was a retro take on a 1960s prototype, and its lap of 3:00.7 set an early high bar. The only thing that car shares with today’s GT is a brake-fluid reservoir. Unlike the friendly, effortlessly hurled ’06, the new GT is brutally fast and forgoes nearly all comforts in its quest for speed and cornering agility. The Competition Series GT weighs even less and likely will go quicker. We’ve already requested a three-day loan for when Lightning Lap 12 rolls around.

Lap Time: 2:43.0
Class: LL5
Base Price with Performance-Enhancing Options: $494,750
As-Tested Price: $525,750
Power and Weight: 647 hp • 3381 lb • 5.2 lb/hp
Tires: Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2; F: 245/35ZR-20 (95Y), R: 325/30ZR-20 (106Y)

The G.O.A.T.

Lightning Lap started 11 years ago as our North American parallel to Nürburgring lap times. We have over 220 laps on record; these are the data points for the three fastest contenders: