Lightning Lap 2019: Every Car, Every Lap Time!

Often times in the paddock someone would spot the Camry sitting between the Camaro ZL1 1LE and a Mercedes-AMG GT63 S and ask, wait, whose car is that? The Camry is here for the reader who cries out each time we lap a car that's double their annual income. This one's for you. Unfortunately the summer-tire TRD version was unavailable, but the XSE laptime is completely acceptable for a family sedan on noisy all-season tires. We measured 0.78 g in Turn 1 because of both rubber and the lack of fully-defeatable stability.

Lapping the 181-hp Miata around VIR's 4.1-mile course is a careful dance between momentum and input to soak up braking distances and tackle corners. The RF uses all the grip it can to help shove it around each apex and its predictable handling help it point to the next one. A sneeze in the wrong direction could be detrimental to lap times, meaning every input needs to connect perfectly to get the exit of each corner just right. Nothing is a full-minute faster than the Miata yet, but each year one car gets closer.

Volkswagen puts its 228-hp turbocharged inline-four from the GTI into a four-door with a trunk. The Jetta GLI gets an electronically controlled limited-slip differential and 13.4-inch brake rotors from it too. Thanks to its 235/35R-19 Pirelli P Zero PZ4 tires, we were able to fling the GLI further into each braking zone than even the Golf R. The miracles accomplished by its front differential give it torque when you need it the most, and its sticky tires grip long enough for you to actually use it.

The cheapest way we've ever lapped VIR in under 3:08 is behind the wheel of Hyundai's Veloster N. Its 275-hp turbocharged inline-four pulls like a team of pissed-off wild horses. Shifting through gears is snappy thanks to its stable feeling gates, which makes upshifts met by quick rev-matched downshifts a breeze that require less footwork. The electronically-controlled limited-slip differential puts the torque down precisely when it's needed which helped it maintain high speeds in corners. Although its 64/36 weight distribution keeps the Veloster N's nose down, regardless of how hard the front wheels might sniff, understeer doesn't become a problem.

Our initial reaction on-track to the G70 was worrisome. Last year its Kia Stinger GT cousin lost its brakes after its first hot lap and had us deep in the grass after Turn 1. Lucky for us, the Genesis G70 wears track-worthy pads on its sports sedan as standard equipment, which led to less grass in our diet and a laptime 4.3-seconds faster than the Kia. We found manually shifting the eight-speed auto garnered the quickest results.

This Zanardi Edition NSX is one of 51 made, and to make it even more special, this one has an aftermarket supercharger bolted to its 3.5-liter V-6. Keeping this mid-engine time machine on the racetrack was no easy task. It's lack of power steering turned cornering into a full cardio workout, but it was still more fun than any modern car we can think of with a similar time. We estimate the blower adds 40 horses to the NSX's 290-hp, which was enough to top the new Supra's speed on the front straight.

The Stelvio Quadrifoglio has a crazy side. Unlike its sports-sedan counterpart, the Stelvio has suspension travel you'd expect on an SUV its size, and using it to your advantage on the track to go deeper into curbing is key to a fast lap. The carbon-ceramic brakes help it through braking zones, but it's the speed and grip that remind you this patient is completely off their medication.

The natural roar of Lexus' first Track Edition model made us appreciate its no-turbo V-8 amongst a sea of mostly turbo V-6 and inline engines. The RC F Track weighs 253 pounds lighter than its normal counterpart, which translated to a 3.2-second lap improvement and quicker acceleration. Four unfortunate pieces both models share are tires, which we felt limited its true potential of sending it faster around the track and further up this list.

The new Supra proves, what few others in the last 13 years of Lightning Lap could, that horsepower and weight can only get you so far. At 10.1 pounds-per-horsepower the Supra lands amid 500-hp behemoths including the 2006 Corvette Z06 and Viper SRT10. With a well-controlled suspension and steering that doesn't ever do too much, the Supra drives faster than some of the cars you might think it has no business beating.

BMW added 40 horsepower, 37 pound-feet of torque, and 11 letters to the M2 for 2019. The twin-turbo engine from the M4 gives it even more power to climb revs which has only sweetened our love for the mighty coupe. Faster than ever in straight sections it knocked 2.2 seconds off the BMW M2 we tracked in 2016.

The Cayenne Turbo we lapped this year was equipped with carbon-ceramic brake rotors that measure 17.3-inches in size. For reference, the average american eats on a 12-inch dinner plate. It's all gravy as the big brakes slowed this 5120-lb SUV from 144.9 mph into Turn 1 without fading. Of course the sticky Pirelli PZero Corsa PZC4 tires deserve part of the praise, as a $2110 option should.

It was a wild ride of service lights and failure warnings for the Giulia Quadrifoglio at VIR this year. The rear differential overheated, but only after the "service electronic throttle control" light appeared, which had already wounded performance. Despite the mishaps, during its brief moments of high-speed reliability at each corner, this years Giulia beat its previous time in 2017 by 1.4 seconds.

The C63 S coupe is a lesson in the importance of tire choice. This coupe weighed 110 pounds more than its four-door variant we lapped four years ago. Even so, it still blew the extra doors off the sedan by 2.1 seconds, and that's especially thanks to the sticky Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires. They also allowed us to brake later into, and accelerate sooner out of corners and with more precision than the sedan we last drove with Pilot Super Sports.

You're looking at the fresh face of the fastest SUV we've lapped around VIR. What's it faster than? 2017 Audi R8 V10, 2018 Porsche 718 Cayman GTS, and even the 911 GT3 RS from 2011. It did so well, it also beat the Cayenne Turbo, which shares its engine block, transmission, and platform, by 3.4 seconds. The Urus achieved 1.04 g's in Turn 1, an achievement unmet by even the BMW M5 Competition. The Urus doesn't conform to traditional SUV capabilities, its now raised the bar well beyond them.

BMW added 17-hp, returned dampers, stiffer spring, a new anti-roll bar for the rear, and ball-jointed toe-control links. It's a lot of new, which is why it beat last year's M5 by 1.2 seconds around the track. Its superb all-wheel-drive system lets you quickly throttle out of any situation, in any corner, while putting the right amount of torque at the right end of the car when you need it most. The Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires help reward BMW on the improvements for 2019, which have only made it faster.

What is essentially a lighter version of the base 911, this Carrera T has thinner rear window glass to save weight, and grippy Pirelli P Zero Corsa PZC4 tires around its 20-inch wheels to keep it from floating way. Its controllable handling and quick-shifting dual-clutch automatic transmission add confidence when it comes to pushing the limits. A combination that encourages new drivers to keep learning, and rewards experienced drivers by delivering what they've learned to expect.

Here's the new face of the fastest four-door in the last 13 years of Lightning Lap. Sitting comfortably at the top by nearly five seconds, the 630-hp twin-turbo V-8 pushed the GT63 S to a max speed of 155.6 mph on the front stretch, faster than the Camaro ZL1 1LE and the 911 GT3RS. It's a big car, and even with big carbon-ceramic rotors, the GT63 S isn't immune to the inevitable brake fade that comes with stopping other heavyweights at this level.

Back this year with a new 10-speed automatic, the Camaro ZL1 1LE is still powered by a 650-hp supercharged V-8. Even at triple-digit speeds the brake-pedal never let us down, and tempted us each corner to brake later and later. With the advice of Bill Wise, Chevy's chassis control engineer who also set the ZL1 1LE's 7:16.04 lap at the Nurburgring, we turned the Camaro's Performance Traction Management (PTM) off on Day 2 to squeak a time that was 0.7-seconds quicker than our ride two years ago in the six-speed manual car.

The 600LT was a complete missile at VIR this year. Launched by a 592-hp twin-turbo V-8, it reached 146.8-mph just before entering the Climbing Esses. It made it to 165.3 mph on the front straight, narrowly beating last years Porsche 911 GT2 RS Weissach, you know, last years fastest car at Lightning Lap ever. Superb car control with brakes powerful enough to interrupt a politician, the 600LT is pure supercar behind its sports car disguise on paper.

The GT3 RS is a 520-hp rocket that proudly brags about its 9000-rpm redline in the most harmonious way possible. It's good at what it does, and the fact it destroyed the once Lightning Lap record-holder Porsche 918 Spyder's lap time by 1.5 seconds, explains why. The almost predictive-like dual-clutch automatic shifts quicker than our attention, though at low speeds we felt it to be a little too conservative. A chassis that responds as accurately as this car with brakes and steering characteristics of everything we could ask for, it's no wonder it sits top-five of all time.

Corvette engineer Jim Mero drove a 2019 Corvette ZR1 to a 2:37.3 lap on VIR's Grand Course setting the production-car record not long ago. But, under VIR rules, only lap times set during sanctioned race events count as official, meaning both his and our 2.4-second faster record are mere unofficial achievements. No major auto racing series uses the 4.1-mile Grand Course (IMSA runs the 3.3-mile Full Course), which means that if McLaren wants real slice of record breaking history outside of our book, they should let us take one racing.