True, it might take specific people and specific conditions to replicate similar results, but the same can be said for almost any experiment ever done. For example, your average car will not run a quarter mile over ice as fast as it will on asphalt. It just so happens that there is an over abundance of motoring journalists who can keep a car in a straight line, have access to drag strips, can shift decently well (or know how to operate a launch control system), and can therefore replicate results with an apparently greater degree of consistency.

Just because maximizing the speed of a lap time takes a specific set of conditions and a specific set of driving skills, that doesn’t make the result untrue, inaccurate, or even misrepresentative of a car’s abilities. If I bought a GT-R could I get it to go 0-60 in 3.5 seconds? Yeah, I could, most likely with minimal effort. Could I get it to go 7:29 around the Nurburgring? Probably not without a few years of serious practice. However, if I were to hand the keys over to the Nissan test driver who posted both the 7:38 and the 7:29, chances are that under pretty good conditions, he could post a time somewhere within that range. The fact is that when one purchases a car, they don’t purchase driving ability or ideal weather conditions along with it, but they do purchase its maximum potential, even if it happens to be beyond what they can realize.

Furthermore, a lap time, in my view, is far more representative of how a car can perform in real world conditions. Personally, I don’t spend a whole lot of time going 0-60 in a straight line, or achieving top speed or trying to maximize fuel efficiency. All that being said, I’m not one who considers these times to be absolute truth. They’re just examples. Cars that are grouped similarly together may very well swap leader board positions from lap to lap. However, it does shed a good deal of light on the differences between cars like the GT-R and the Camaro. And I’m not trying to pick on the Camaro here, but almost a full minute of difference is not something that’s going to be made up by drivers and track conditions.

Hopefully this will just become standard practice and manufacturer’s will start running everything around this track.

“The record simply represents the first timed lap of a fuel-cell vehicle around the German track, so Nissan did not have any other times to beat.”

Whooptie ƒµ©king doo!

So, it’s not a record breaking lap time, but a record precedent as the first fuel cell vehicle tested in the ‘ring. Good step for Nissan, actually. At least someone is doing it.

It’s honda, LLN.