We reported earlier this week on the record lap time set by the Mustang GTD at the Nürburgring in Germany. Its sub-7-minute time on the famed track was the fastest ever by an American production car.
Now, Ford has shared an in-car video showing Dirk Müller at the wheel of the Mustang GTD for the record-setting lap. It's definitely worth a look, firstly to hear the car, but also to remember just how technically complex this circuit is, and how much concentration it requires at all times.
Interviewed by Car and Driver magazine, Müller said that despite the difficult weather conditions that day, he and the team were able to complete three laps of the track. He broke the seven-minute barrier on the very first, which took a ton of pressure off.
His first lap was the fastest of the three, and the team knows it can do better. Indeed, track conditions were less than ideal, not least because of the extreme heat.
Greg Goodall, chief engineer of the GTD program, has been with Ford for 22 years and has worked on every Mustang since the introduction of the fourth generation for 1994. Over the past two years, he and the rest of the team have worked to transform the Mustang GT3 race car into a supercar. He told Car and Driver that the main objective from day one was to get the GTD to complete the Nürburgring in under seven minutes.
But they want to do better. Goodall said that “What matters is what you put on the track. We want more. We're not ready to be done.”