It’s over 16 years since I posted the lap time of the Porsche Carrera GT to the BridgeToGantry blog, back in July 2008.
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A lot has changed since then, and you’d be forgiven for thinking the CGT’s 7:28 (set by Marc Basseng during a hypercar round-up by Black Falcon, if I remember right) is pretty irrelevant today.
But Michelin, Porsche, and one Jörg Bergmeister are here to make it all very relevant again. Because, damn them to hell, they’re about to steal a little over 7 minutes of your time, if you watch this video:
Hell yeah, that crazy V10 sounds even better today than it did back then. Maybe it’s too many turbos, maybe it’s too many electric appliances (sorry, I mean EVs), but the V10 howl just sounds INCREDIBLE today.
The CGT was never an easy car to drive fast, and it’s had more than its fair share of high-profile crashes (Paul Walker, RIP). In the lawsuit that followed that tragic crash, there was much talk of old, slippery tires. It’s a common hazard for supercar enthusiasts—finding fresh, correctly stored rubber is tough. And when you’re putting that on 500-700hp cars with little in the way of traction control, things can get sketchy, fast.
Enter Michelin, Porsche, and SportAuto. If there’s one thing I take from this, it’s that all those ridiculous headlines claiming a 2024 family car is faster than a 2004 supercar are just pointless.
The Nordschleife you can drive today is faster than the Nordschleife you could drive 20 years ago. And it’ll be faster next year. Every resurfacing, every repair, has made it quicker. Sure, they could make the world’s longest permanent racetrack slower by adding a chicane or three—but that hasn’t happened yet. Not bad for a track that’s only 2.5 years from its centenary.
So, with that in mind, I just wanna say chapeau to Porsche, Michelin, and Herr Bergmeister.
What a display. What passion. It’s wonderfully irrelevant to the masses, but for the old hands and true Nordschleife fans, it’s exactly the kind of relevance we want.
SOURCES:
newsroom.porsche.com
Sportauto.de YouTube Channel
BONUS CONTENT FROM 2008
Gavin shared his FlickR account with me from that magical trackday where some Swiss bloke let Marc Basseng loose in all of his supercars. This was published in Evo, and the source of the 7m28s laptime of the Porsche Carrera GT! Check it out!
