Usually, when an automaker sets a record lap at the Nürburgring, there’s a lot of yelling about it that follows. Press releases. Tweets. On-board footage. Stuff like that. Volvo, apparently, set a record with the S60 Polestar at the Ring last year and then... went about its usual business and said nothing to anyone about it.
The S60 Polestar ran the Green Hell in just 7:51, which, at the time, was record-breaking for a road-legal four-door car. Then the Alfa Romeo Giulia beat it, but that’s not the point of this story.
Basically, what happened was that Cyan Racing, the Volvo racing team, was at the Ring last year for the WTCC race in Germany. After the race, they hung back at the track to test the S60 Polestar road car. And then I guess they inadvertently set a record lap time?
“Being Swedish, we didn’t want to shout about the record,” the accompanying video’s narrator said. Instead, the team just wanted to “learn from the experience” and that these learnings were so important for the road and race cars that they had to be kept secret.
Okay, sure!
I would not be surprised if, like, a Mercedes-AMG S63 was regularly breaking lap times and Mercedes didn’t say anything about it, either. I think these lap records are probably broken pretty frequently and it comes down to whether or not the automaker chooses to make a big deal about it.