Nissan – Porsche Cat Fight Continues: "GT-R Ring Time Discrepancy Down to Driver"

Robert Farago
by Robert Farago

Oh man, this is getting ugly. After Porsche’s Turbo and GT2 lost their fastest ’round the ‘Ring record to the Nissan GT-R, the German automaker was… skeptical. So they bought a GT-R in the U.S. and ran the Nürburgring to verify their Japanese rival’s claim. And so they didn’t, failing to get within 25 seconds of GT-R’s ‘Ring highly hyped lap time. Porsche attributed the GT-R’s triumph to non-standard tires, which would nullify the Nissan’s “fastest production car” lap record. Cornered at the Paris Auto Show, Nissan’s European spokesman Neil Reeve said “Quite simply we’re not going to get into a war of words with Porsche.” And then did exactly that. “The final word from us is that it was done on absolutely standard tyres which are available to customers in the showroom. They’re not trick tyres – absolutely standard tyres, normal road tyres. The GT-R comes with Bridgestone and Goodyear (Dunlop). One tyre gives slightly better times around the ‘Ring. We did it on Dunlop. They’re available with the car.” When car.com.au‘s Andrew Heasley pushed him for an explanation, well, read between the lines. “We absolutely maintain (that) Tochio Suzuki – the chief test driver on the GT-R program pounded thousands of laps – he got to know every inch of Nurburgring (circuit) and how the car performs on the Nurburgring and hence set that fabulous lap. More than that, I can’t speculate. I can’t explain why they couldn’t match the time.”

Robert Farago
Robert Farago

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  • Campisi Campisi on Oct 03, 2008
    Still waiting for them to take a Corvette ZR-1 around the track. They did, and it pulled a 7:26.4 lap time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordschleife_fastest_lap_times
  • Areitu Areitu on Oct 03, 2008

    SAAB95JD : I thought the exact same thing. I say hand both cars over to Sabine and let her rip both cars around the track on the same day.

  • Timd38 Timd38 on Oct 03, 2008

    None of them (Nissan or Porsche) talk about the ZR-1 Corvette.....

  • Nue Nue on Oct 04, 2008

    Like the last poster stated, why the hell hasn't Porsche challenged the current production car record? Either Porsche is way behind the times or they're obviously not seeing eye to eye between the GT-R and the ZR-1.

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