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Lap of the gods: Ford Mustang GTD thunders to sub-7 minute Nürburgring lap
Posted by Talbot Payne on December 10, 2024
Mustang, welcome to the world’s supercar elite.
Ford Motor Co.’s iconic muscle car has become only the sixth production sports car to officially break the seven-minute mark around the epic, high-speed, 12.9-mile Nürburgring, the world’s most challenging road course. The 6.57.685 lap, clocked by Ford pro-race driver Dirk Muller in the winged, 815-horsepower, V-8-powered, 2025 GTD, validates Ford’s ambitions to compete against top sports car brands including Porsche, Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes, Aston Martin, Lamborghini and Corvette.
The lap is the fastest Nürburgring time recorded by an American-made sports car, with the GTD hitting speeds as high as 187 mph. The achievement dovetailed with Mustang’s introduction last year of a GT3 race car to compete at the highest levels of sports car racing. At its 24 Hours of Le Mans debut in June, the Mustang GT3 — essentially, a racing version of the production GTD — thundered to a third-place podium finish.
The GTD was on display at the French race in the paddock. When it goes on sales next year, the GTD is expected to list for 10 times more — an estimated $325,000 — than the base, $33,000 Mustang.
“The team behind Mustang GTD took what we’ve learned from decades on the track and engineered a Mustang that can compete with the world’s best supercars,” said Ford President and CEO Jim Farley, an avid racer who pushed the program to take Mustang to new heights 60 years after the first, 1964½ model was born. “We’re proud to be the first American automaker with a car that can lap the Nürburgring in under seven minutes, but we aren’t satisfied. We know there’s much more time to find with Mustang GTD. We’ll be back.”
Ford vowed to return in 2025, and satisfaction no doubt includes closing the gap to the 6:43.300 sports car record set by a Porsche 991 GT2 RS and the 6:48.047-minute lap recorded by Mercedes’ top dog, the AMG GT Black Series. Both the Mercedes and Porsche compete against Ford in the international GT3 class and the AMG GT and 911 GT3 RS are production variants like the Mustang GTD.
The other three sub-seven laps were recorded by models of the Porsche 911 GT3, the fastest normally-aspirated production sports car. The 911 GT2 and Mercedes are turbocharged, and the Mustang is supercharged.
The ground-pounding, supercharged, 5.2-liter V-8 engine is similar to the mill in the last-generation, 760-horsepower Shelby Mustang GT500. But with upgrades like a rear-mounted transmission for better balance, lightweight carbon-fiber driveshaft, dry-sump oil system to withstand high side-forces, and swan-neck rear wing, the GTD shattered the Shelby’s 7:39.280 lap around the so-called Green Hell.
The diabolical, 73-turn track is the benchmark for performance car testing with its blind corners, elevation changes and long stretches of flat-out, 180-mph-plus sprints.
In unofficial lap runs, a Dodge Viper ACR run by a private group nearly broke the seven-minute barrier with a 7.01.3 lap in 2017 and German publication Sport Auto took the Chevy Corvette C8 Z06 around the Green Hell in 7:10.51 this year. The lap record by a manufacturer’s hypercar is 6:29.090 set by the Formula 1-based Mercedes-AMG ONE. The outright lap record is 5.19.546 set by the Porsche 919 Hybrid Evo race car.
The carbon-fiber-skinned GTD was developed by Ford’s Toronto-based racing partner Multimatic which has also developed hellions like the mid-engine Ford GT. Its GTD badge is a reference to IMSA’s GTD race class that GT3 cars compete in. GTD’s eye-watering price is similar to its European supercar peers.
While it shared development with the GT3 race car that runs on tracks across the globe including Daytona and Le Mans, the GTD isn’t subject to the so-called Balance of Performance regulations of GT3 racing. Unburdened of those rules, GTD took on the the ‘Ring with state-of-the-art tech including carbon-ceramic brakes, active aerodynamics, and semi-active suspension.
Ford captured the GTD’s two-year assault on the ‘Ring in a behind-the-scenes, 13-minute documentary called “The Road to the Ring” which is available on Ford.com, YouTube, Facebook and other social media channels. The film features Farley, driver Muller, Multimatic Chief Technical Officer Larry Holt, and other members of the program.
Henry Payne is auto critic for The Detroit News. Find him at hpayne@detroitnews.com or @HenryEPayne