For the last 5 years the Nurburgring lap record has belonged to cars built in Germany, and we never thought anything of it, we just simply sat back and waited to see if a non-German car company could one day claim the lap record-on the German based track.

We watched the introduction of Hypercar after hypercar, after hypercar, but none of them would even attempt a laptime at the Nurburgring, and we all thought nothing of it. But then Chevy introduced the Corvette ZR1 and posted 5 lap times for it at racetracks across America, where it annihilated every existing street car lap record, even that of the mighty Porsche GT3 RS, and our jaws hit the floor.

Then Chevy introduced the even faster ZR1X, and we started to wonder. And then before we know it, Chevy was running 3 C8 Corvettes at the Nurburgring, and it began to look like we might have the hero that would finally take the crown from the AMG 1.

Then fuel was added to the fire, when on June 28th, or, 6/28 Chevy posted a video of the Corvette at the Nurburgring, and people believed Chevy was hinting that the corvette had set a laptime of 6 minutes and 28 seconds, 1 second quicker than the Mercedes AMG One.

But setting an official Nurburgring lap time is not as cut an dry as must people think, and in this video we are going to open up the whole can of worms on why hypercar manufacturers outside of Germany are not attempting to set an official Nurburgring lap time.

Automotive media outlet carbuzz recently spoke with Tony Roma, the current executive chief engineer for the Corvette, and not the owner of the restaurant chain, and we got some very frustrating news, only the news wasn't frustrating in the way we expected. And the information he shared with us was extremely eye-opening and shed a lot of light on why so many supercar and hypercar manufacturers have stopped attempting Nürburgring lap records.

In the interview Tony Roma, or, T-Rome as I just decided to call him, said: "It's more difficult than it's even been to set a record at the ring. They charge you a lot of money to talk about it, and they want to have certified timing and scoring," T-Rome also said "You have to rent the entire track, pay for the safety marshals, pay the licensing fee, pay the filming fee.
And if your day rains, oh well. We are not based in Stuttgart, so we can't just go back next week. That's why you haven't seen us set a lap record attempt."

So in the interview, T-Rome chose some interesting words and said it's more difficult than ever to set a lap record at the Nurburgring, and those difficulties have nothing to do with the Corvettes performance. He mentions track rental fees, press fees, scoring fees, safety fees, licensing fees, filming fees and also any costs associated with traveling and shipping the cars and equipment from America to Germany.

Now I personally would like to see the Corvette break the Nurburgring lap record as much as or more than anyone else, and T-Rome suggesting that the associated costs were the biggest barrier to the corvette setting the time, was a huge letdown to hear, but it was also pretty insightful. For years many of us have been wondering why such impressive non-German hypercars like the Koenigsegg Jesko, Bugatti Chiron, Aston Martin Valkyrie and Rimac Nevara have never bothered to attempt an official Nurburgring lap time, while everyday German cars like the Porsche Panamera, Mercedes AMG C63, BMW M4 and Volkswagen GTI do.

And while we're opening up this can of worms, we also need to talk about the fact that companies like Koenigsegg, Ferrari and Mclaren have never even attempted a Nurburgring lap record, and anytime one of their cars was clocking a time, it was being conducted by an independent media source like Auto Sport or Evo Magazine. And get this, out of the 4 hundred and 85 official Nurburgring lap times for street legal cars that I could find, 2 hundred and 63 of them were for german cars.

That means that in all the time people have been keeping track of nurbergring lap times, despite the fact that there have been hundreds of car companies worldwide, 54% of the official Nurburgring lap times belong to german cars.
And just to put this into perspective, there are official Nurburgring lap times for 10 different versions of the BMW M4, But not 1 single lap time for any of the 9 Bugatti Chiron variants.

And I seriously doubt that BMW was forced to pay the track fees, rental fees, press fees, scoring fees, safety fees, licensing fees and filming fees for each of those M4 lap times, that GM is being forced to pay for the Corvette lap times.