I kept seeing this and misreading it as 'Nuremberging' and I thought it was some internet fad where former Nazis outrun the authorities in high performance sports cars.
So a whole 60 seconds doesn't just disappear from a lap record. This is the first time that a real spaceship racecar has been allowed on this track or something, right?
More or less. The high end performance race car teams almost never do time runs on the nurburgring due it being too dangerous and not benefiting them.
risk of destroying a car that can cost multiple millions to replace.
risk of injuring or killing a valuable professional driver
cost of transporting a whole race support and engineering team to a track that these cars require.
cost of renting out and closing the whole track
benefit is just bragging rights as race teams are not in a position to benefit from any sales boost a brand receives. (this was funded outright by Volkswagen I imagine)
so most of the record times set on the nurburgring are by car companies trying to sell the specific sports car setting the time.
The last lap record was set 35 years ago in qualifying by a race car, a Porsche 956, that was set up specifically for the track. There have since been plenty of race cars that could have easily broken the record but no race team has attempted it, for the reasons SolRo gave.
there was a rumor that no attempt was made to break the record out of respect for the man who set it, as he was killed two weeks later at another race, but the reality is that the record was never broken because the (full) Nurburgring stopped being used in the top-tier racing series (Formula 1 and Le Mans-style prototypes).
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