Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus founder Jim Glickenhaus reckons that the firm's new SCG003S road car is on course to set a Nürburgring production car lap record.
SCG has entered two race-spec SCG003C cars in the upcoming 24 Hours of Nürburgring with its Chris Ruud Lightspeed Racing team, and the race version of the brand’s road car has already set a lap time of 6min 40sec; one of the fastest times ever recorded at the track. The car also set the fastest lap in a recent six-hour race at the circuit, and was leading the event in the closing stages before late brake troubles.
Glickenhaus released a video of the SCG003C’s lap alongside those of the Porsche 918 Spyder and Lamborghini Huracan Performante; current second and fourth ‘Ring record holders for production cars. The Radical SR8 and SR8LM’s records – third and first respectively – were overlooked, but the SCG003S's time already beats the SR8LM's record time of 6min 48sec by eight seconds.
The SCG003’s 6min 40sec lap time eclipses the 6min 52sec of the Lamborghini and 6min 57sec of the Porsche, although Glickenhaus noted the race version of his car had 200bhp and 184lb ft less than the road version, and was carrying 100kg of ballast to meet the race regulations. The 6min 37sex lap time is still 28 seconds off of the current lap record, Stefan Bellof's 6min 11sec time in 1983, while driving a Porsche 956.
Despite these, Glickenhaus claims that its racing cars will be more closely related to their road-going counterparts than other manufacturers’ GT3 cars are with their road cars. No more details on the SCG003S road car itself have been released, but Glickenhaus said that the car will soon begin road testing, adding that customers will soon be able to experience the car for themselves.
The car also ran on race tyres, but can be seen dodging other cars at the ‘Ring – Lamborghini and Porsche’s lap times were on traffic-free tracks, and founder Jim Glickenhaus is keen to point out that both had non-street-legal roll cages.
Ahead of his firm's official Nurburgring record bid, Glickenhaus been outspoken about the lack of uniformity in production car Nürburgring records, saying: “I think that part of the requirement for a road 'record' should require real road legal tyres that anyone can buy and that can drive a reasonable distance to The Ring, at a ride height that can manage real roads not lowered for 'record' attempts.” He added: “There is no legal road tyre that can stand up to five flat out laps at the 'Ring.”
Glickenhaus also suggested that a production car record attempt may not go ahead without this uniformity in place: “As an aside, race regulations for safety reasons now require a higher ride height than last year. If the organisers take up my ideas and bring rules to Road Car Nordschleife records, we shall see just how fast it is.”
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Judging from the interest in buying our road car that we've received I think some agree.
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Jim
Jim, I understand what you
But I think it is massively erroneous for cars such as hot hatchbacks to be punching each other on the nose with ever faster Ring times, whilst simultaneously becoming less involving to drive on the road.
What eulogised road car from the past - say from 2000 backwards - was ever lauded for its lap times on a track? Lancia Integrale? Alfa Sud? Daytona? MX5? 205 GTi? Any Lamborghini? They all could have honed and optimised for the track, but very thankfully were not.
Whilst the Ring may be technically a road, it is, without any doubt, a track. And mainstream manufacturers have bases there because they have been lured in to a foolish competition for what they now perceive to be the measure of all thing.
The 911R is by all accounts a lovely recent road car, very particularly because its lap time friendly qualities were dialled out.