Ferrari 599XX sets Nurburgring record. Really? +video

The Ferrari 599XX sets a Nurburgring record - video below

We’ve brought you a number of ‘Nurburgring Record’ stories over the last year. It’s a big deal for car makers and adds kudos to their offerings. So it’s no surprise to see Ferrari pitching their hat in to the ring with the claim of a new Nurburgring record for the Ferrari 599XX.

The time for the 599XX round the Nurburgring is a very impressive sub 7 minutes – 6m 58.16s to be precise. An astonishingly quick time by any measure. Compare that to the Nissan GT-R Nurburgring time of  7m 26.7s set last year and the 599XX trashes it by almost half a minute.

So with such a strong time – and an entertaining drive as evidenced in the video below – it’s a nice little feather in Ferrari’s cap. But is it? Is their claim that “The Ferrari 599XX is the first ever production-derived sports car to break the 7-minute barrier on the classic 20.832 km Nordschleife circuit” truth or trick? We don’t want to rain on Ferrari’s parade, but we think they’re being a bit disingenuous with this claim.

‘Production Derived’ is an interesting phrase. The 599XX is a track-only version of the Ferrari 599 and as such has an awaful lot of tech on it that isn’t available on the road car. Does that make the claim any less valid. I suppose not. But it’s not a road car – not by any stretch of the imagination. But a road-legal car has posted a better time – the Radical SR8.

The Radical SR8LM posted a lap time of 6m 48s in August of last year, having driven to the Nurburgring from the UK. And that time beats the 599XX by a full 10 seconds. But the Radical SR8 isn’t a production-derived sports car. It is a production sports car.

So maybe Ferrari are claiming the record just for this very small niche of ‘production-derived sports cars’.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Agakdx32tfM

By Cars UK