[hotlap]

Originally Posted by Number 3

I am very interested in the Z06 time.

The Z/28 time seems to be an after thought at this point. Even on this site, there were no posts when Ford first announced the G350R time. I'm sure the Ford fan boys were going hoo haaaa, but a non-event here. But yes, it would be a nice trump to play a dry track trump card. But if they had it, the day after would have been the time to play it. And if that time is equal or slightly worse, then it does no good to post "we are almost as good as the new Ford"

Ford never put out or officially claimed that 7:32 time and Al O called in a Hot Rod mag interview (red).

AO: We did, but the way that Nürburgring works during industry pool weeks, which are a few times a year, is, all manufacturers go and you get to do all your testing closed to the public. One of the gentlemen’s agreements is they don’t allow cameras during the day, because while we might have production Z/28s over there, Mercedes or Range Rover or Porsche, they might have something camouflaged. Everyone is sharing the track. To do a fast hot lap, you really need the track cleared, so what they do is every day at 5:10 p.m., they shut the track entrance down. It takes on average, 9 to 10 minutes to get around the track. So if you’re going to do a hot lap, you’ve got from 10 after 5 to about 5:30 p.m. and then they open the track up to the public. During the day, sometimes you get these periods where there’s not a lot of activity on the track and you can run laps, but no cameras. We’ve actually run Z/28 times that are significantly faster than the one we published in the video, but we respect the gentlemen’s agreement, and to protect our integrity, we don’t publish a time that we can’t verify with a video. We could have easily done that. Unfortunately, when we were there, it rained, literally every day at 5 o’clock. You’d see the clouds roll in at 5 o’clock. The day Adam ran that [for the video], I wasn’t even aware it was raining on his side of the track and when he came back in and we watched the video, our jaws dropped. But the fact of the matter is, we’ve run much faster times, we just don’t have the video to stand behind it publically. Hypothetically, if someone wanted to lay claim that they ran a 7.32 at the Nürburgring ring, um, the fact that we were there at the same time and we know who ran at 10 after 5 every day, it might put it into question if that was real. Especially if the manufacturer didn’t stand behind it. Just sayin’.[Editor’s note: If you didn’t catch that little jab, rumors have been circulating online that the Mustang GT350R ran a 7:32.19, uncomfirmed by Ford.]

Read more: http://www.hotrod.com/features/1506-take-five-with-al-oppenheiser/#ixzz3c2w9UshF
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