The Mercedes-AMG ONE has smashed the Nürburgring lap record for production cars, beating the Porsche 911 GT2 RS Manthey by eight seconds!
6:35.183 minutes. That’s all the time it took for the new Mercedes-AMG ONE to cover all 20.832 kilometres of the Nürburgring Nordschliefe. A quite remarkable achievement, I’m sure you’ll agree.
The car’s taken them a long time to develop, but now that it’s here, the F1-engined Mercedes-AMG ONE hypercar clearly means business.
Powered by a 1063hp hybrid powertrain, the AMG ONE features active aero bodywork centred around a carbon monocoque, and when you put all of that together, the results are quite spectacular, as pro racing driver Maro Engel found out once he got behind the wheel.
“That was really an unforgettable experience,” said Maro after completing the record lap. “I didn’t expect that we would be able to set such a lap time with these [unfavourable] track conditions. In some crucial areas of the track, it hadn’t dried completely yet and was therefore tricky. That was a special challenge.”
Despite the weather, Maro still managed to shave eight seconds off of the previous Nürburgring lap record held by Porsche with its 911 GT2 RS Manthey edition. Now, to the average person, eight seconds might not sound like a lot, but in motorsport terms, eight seconds is a lifetime. In fact, the Mercedes-AMG ONE’s performance at the Nürburgring was so good that the Nordschleife officials have had to devise a new ‘super sports car’ category for it in their record books, not feeling as though it would be fair to put it directly against the other road-legal vehicles that have gone before it.
To put things into context, the AMG ONE’s top speed during the record attempt was clocked at 338kmh (210mph) along the iconic Döttinger Höhe straight. Mind you, it’s still nowhere near the outright Nürburgring Nordschleife lap record.
That accolade is still held by Porsche, who posted a mind-boggling time of 5:19.546 minutes in their purpose-built 919 Hybrid Evo, driven by Timo Bernhard. That thing is more closely related to a spaceship than a production car though, so the AMG’s effort should still be considered deeply impressive.
Anyway, if you’d like to know what it feels like to get around the Nordschleife in just 6:35.183 minutes, check out the onboard footage of Maro’s record run below!
