A new version of the Ford Mustang GTD has gone even faster around the Nürburgring Nordschleife course, knocking off the times set by the Chevrolet Corvette which knocked it off its perch.
The standard Mustang GTD set its fastest time of six minutes and 52.072 seconds around the 20.832km track a year ago, but was beaten in the middle of the year by the twin-turbo Corvette ZR1 (six minutes and 50.763 seconds) and the ‘hybrid’ all-wheel drive ZR1X (six minutes and 49.275 seconds).
While the Mustang GTD was classified in the ‘sports cars’ class of the Nürburgring’s record times as it was road registered in Germany, the Corvettes were classified in the Prototype/Pre-Production category as they’re not sold in Europe.
Ford has since returned to the track with the Supervan 4.2 (six minutes and 48.393 seconds) and the GT MkIV (six minutes and 15.98 seconds), the latter of which became the fastest petrol-only vehicle to lap the circuit, though like the Corvette times, the two Fords weren’t counted as production vehicles.
Last week, Ford announced it had returned to the Nordschleife once again with the Mustang GTD and beaten the road-going car’s record with the new ‘Competition’ variant, though once more it doesn’t count for a production-class time.
With a time of six minutes and 40.835 seconds, the Mustang GTD Competition was more than 11 seconds faster than the car’s previous attempt, however it too posted its time to the Prototype/Pre-Production timing board, as it’s not currently road registerable.
While Ford’s press release only makes a passing mention of its upgrades including “new high-performance tyres”, photos of the car clearly show it on racing slicks, which are not road legal.
In addition to the stickier rubber, other enhancements included a Formula 1-style drag reduction system (DRS) for the rear wheel, plus added front drive planes and rear wheel aero discs, covering its new magnesium wheels.
Ford also said that “hardware updates and aggressive tuning” extracted more power and torque from the supercharged 5.2-litre V8 under its bonnet, to beyond the standard 600kW output.
A street-legal version of the Ford Mustang GTD Competition will be offered as a special edition model in the future, though in extremely limited numbers.
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