October has come and gone and we never got an official Nurburgring lap time from Ford for the Mustang GTD. The last time Ford carried out high speed testing of the GTD on the Nurburgring was about two months ago in September, but in this track session the GTD was never being driven at the limits, and ford was most likely using this session to gather data for additional fine tuning of the aerodynamics. And then about a month later on October 16th, ford released this short teaser which consists of clips from a documentary about the GTD achieving a sub-seven minute lap time on the Nurburgring, but at this point, with no announcement, we can probably and sadly assume that Ford did not achieve their goal, and with winter moving in, Ford's attempt at setting an official lap time will most likely be put on hold until May of 2025.
So what happened? To the best of our knowledge, Ford scheduled a day to rent out the Nurburgring for a private session in which they were going to make their attempt to set a sub seven minute lap time, but on that day high winds and bad weather hit the track, so instead of attempting to set a lap time, ford used the track session to get footage of the GTD driving on the track.
Now apparently Ford has never heard the saying "talk softly and carry a big stick", because their stick was certainly big enough, but it seems as though their talk was even bigger, which got a lot of people, including myself, very excited about the GTDs performance, but it looks like ford kind of jumped the gun on this one, because to the best of our knowledge, no official lap time was set. And I don't even think they have ever attempted to set an official lap time yet, because from watching all of the footage of the GTD lapping the Nurburgring, the car was never driven at the limits, it was driven fast, but there was always clear restraint being shown.
And now, the chances that Ford have set their lap time are starting to look a little worse every day.
But another possibility is that during testing, Ford may have realized that the GTD simply would not be able to set a sub seven minute lap time. But we're gonna hope that this is not the case.
So what happens now? Well we know that the window to set a lap time at the Nurburgring has closed due to winter weather conditions, and at this point all we can do is be patient and wait until late spring for Ford to resume testing, which sucks, because Fords world wide media blitz of the GTD was extremely exciting, and it was great to see that beautiful car tearing up the tracks at car events all over the world, and also, Ford weren't the only ones boasting about the GTDs abilities, as I was certainly doing that myself. But regardless of all this, all we can do is wait another 6 months for Ford to resume testing and then another few weeks for the official announcement.
But on the plus side, the GTD did make it's first public appearance last weekend at a cars and coffee event in California
Now I don't want to completely give up hope on a GTD laptime, and maybe there will still be an announcement, and Ford is just waiting for Christmas, or some other event to make that announcement, but with so much time passing since October, it's hard not to assume the worst.
And I guess the question now is, in 6 months, assuming that Ford will have accomplished their goal, will people still care if the GTD completes a sub seven minute lap at the Nurburgring? And with so many other companies also attempting to set sub-second lap times, will setting a sub second lap time even be considered news in 2025 or will it simply be par for the course for top end sports cars?
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