The Ongoing Drama of the Lap Time
Why do we care about lap times around a gloomy old German racetrack? Let's talk about it.
They always open with a single piano note, hanging alone in the air. In the highly dramatic video, that piano note is a plaintive C6, which hovers over the mist-shrouded forest of the Nürburgring Nordschleife. This refers to the 14-minute mini-epic Ford Motor Company produced about the 2025 Ford Mustang GTD’s lap of the Ring.
The single note is a setup. You know a blast of serious action is coming. That’s when the intense strings come in, accompanied by rumbling bass notes and theatric drumbeats. A car crosses the screen in a blur and with a meter-pegging blare. Oh, the drama! Ford has deployed all the varieties of drama. There’s protagonist versus nature: It rains a lot at the Ring. There’s protagonist versus machinery: the substantial task of reverse engineering a GT3 race car into a road-legal carbon-fiber-bodied, 815-hp Mustang. There’s protagonist versus antagonist: Ford is clearly targeting Porsche, specifically the 911 GT3, but refers to the competition only as “the Europeans.”
By now you know the ending. German racer Dirk Müller posted a 6:57.685 lap time, making the GTD the first American production car to break seven minutes …
https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a63289272/lap-time-drama-column/
(photo credit: Ford)
