Yahoo Autos Mercedes-AMG One Breaks Nürburgring Record With 6:35 Lap
Mercedes-Benz revealed Thursday its AMG One supercar has broken the lap record for production cars at the Nürburgring with a lap time of 6:35.183.
The lap was completed on October 28, according to Mercedes. It chose Nürburgring 24-Hour winner and DTM competitor Maro Engel as the driver for the attempt, which took place on a chilly autumn day where parts of the track were not completely dry. Still, the AMG One was able to defeat the former record-holder, the Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series, by over eight seconds—no small gap.
“That was really an unforgettable experience,” Maro Engel said in a statement. “I didn’t expect that we would be able to set such a lap time with these track conditions. In some crucial areas of the track, it hadn’t dried completely yet and was therefore tricky. That was a special challenge. We tried to find the optimal deployment strategy during the pre-tests. Like Lewis Hamilton and George Russell on their race weekends, I also had to deploy the electrical energy of the hybrid drive in the best possible way. That’s not easy, especially with this length of track. In addition, the DRS function had to be used optimally."
The AMG One is as close to a modern Formula 1 car you can get for the road. Underneath the body sits a drivetrain derived from the one found in the company's F1 cars. That means a mid-mounted, 11,000-rpm turbocharged V-6 engine paired to an electric motor, sending power to the rear wheels via a seven-speed sequential transmission and a limited-slip differential. There are also two 120-kW electric motors up front, one for each wheel. And don't forget about all the active aero bits along the body.
It's worth mentioning the AMG One's lap was recorded based on the Nürburgring's new style of measuring lap times. The traditional track layout, used prior to 2021, had cars entering and exiting the track at different places, omitting the small straight that comes after Turn 13. Under the Nürburgring's new "official" method of recording lap times, which uses a single start/finish line and includes that small straight, the AMG One set a 6:35 lap time. If you were to go by the old method of recording times, the car would've set a 6:30.705 lap time.
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