Lightning Lap 2006

In which we inaugurate a new performance standard for cars. Think of it as our version of the Nürburgring benchmark.

How do you measure a car's overall performance, its ability to cover ground quickly and safely? It's relatively easy to clock a car's acceleration, record the distance it requires to stop from 70 mph, and calculate its ability to grip the road, but producing impressive numbers on the test track doesn't necessarily mean that a car will be quick on challenging public roads.

In theory, the time it takes a car to get around a road course is the best way to gauge its overall performance, because the quickest lap time requires a combination of braking, acceleration, grip, and handling. But there are few tracks that genuinely replicate a demanding stretch of public road. A great example is the Nürburgring in Germany, a long track about 50 miles southwest of Cologne. The Nordschleife, a part of the original circuit, is a 12.9-mile ribbon of blacktop that weaves a crazy course through the Eifel Mountains.

The Nordschleife's length and elevation changes, along with an interesting combination of turns, provide a telling measure of a vehicle's handling abilities. Add to that long straights of up to 1.5 miles and numerous braking zones, and you have the best one-lap measure of a vehicle's overall performance. Its benchmark status is evidenced by the fact that most automakers test at the "Ring," and hard-core enthusiasts around the globe know that a sub-eight-minute lap there distinguishes a car as truly special.

In the past year, we've been looking for a reasonable facsimile of the German test track, somewhere not 5000 miles from our Ann Arbor headquarters. We settled on Virginia International Raceway (VIR) in Danville for a number of reasons. The so-called Grand Course runs 4.2 miles, making it one of the longest road courses in the U.S. Although that's only a third the distance of the Nordschleife, VIR has a similar combination of high-speed turns and sweepers draped over hilly countryside. It's no track for the faint of heart.

A case can be made that a lap of VIR is as relevant a measure of overall performance as is a lap of the Ring. And so the lap times we set at VIR from this issue forth will become a new performance gauge at Car and Driver.

To start off, we measured 17 cars, corralled in four of our five groups based on price. Once or twice a year, we'll return to VIR with various cars and update the lap-time database. We won't run every car at VIR that comes our way, but we will have a go at performance-oriented cars — and we hope that, in the not-too-distant future, a lap time at VIR will be just as important to car enthusiasts as a quarter-mile time.


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