Ford Mustang GTD Smashes Own Nürburgring Lap Time

In motorsports, even shaving a tenth of a second off your lap time can be seen as a big improvement. An entire second can be seen as an eternity. Imagine how elated, then, the Ford Mustang GTD engineers were when they returned to Germany’s Nürburgring Nordschliefe and smashed their previous record by a whole 5.5 seconds.

The Mustang GTD, driven by Dirk Müller, recently completed a 12.9-mile lap of “Green Hell” in 06:52.072, besting their previous record of 06:57.685. While the team had previously met their goal of creating a sub-7-minute Nürburgring Mustang, this firmly cements the GTD’s accomplishment, granting it the honor (for now) as the fourth-fastest production sports car to complete a sub-7 lap.

It wasn’t as simple as just showing up again and trying 5.5 seconds harder; a number of refinements went into this feat. In a short video, Ford stated that the drag reduction system, chassis, suspension, powertrain, traction control, and ABS system had all been tuned for the Nürburgring; and those adaptations will be reflected in customer samples, as teased by the “Nürburgring Tuned For Customers” tagline.

It just goes to show a proper test and tune, running the course and recalibrating the car for the track and conditions, is so crucial if you’re trying to “go like hell.”