The Viper ACR Has Gone Faster at the 'Ring
After more testing, the crowdfunded effort to set a Nürburgring record with the Dodge Viper ACR went back to the Nordschleife in the hopes of bettering their previous time of 7m03.45. Brothers and pro-racers Dominik and Mario Farnbacher were the drivers for this latest record attempt.
And they did beat that time, but by mere tenths. It's a sign of the times when a 7m03.23s lap of the Nürburgring can be described as disappointing, but that’s the reality facing the Dodge Viper ACR lap record team today.
“We made some real progress in the setup over the last couple of days,” explained Dominik Farnbacher, the lead driver of the project. “So it’s just really frustrating that we couldn’t turn those improvements into more time.”
It was Mario Farnbacher who set the newest time, though the brothers were only separated by tenths at each sector. Track conditions definitely took the blame for the lack of improvement in pace. The old northern loop had been baking under the August sun all day, resulting in track temperatures of 111 degrees, very high for the Nordschliefe. That heat wreaked havoc on the tires.
“We tortured those tires,” admits one of the driving forces behind the project, Russ Oasis. “There’s no other way to describe it. What we did, driving those tires at those temperatures for so long, it’s just not been done before on the Kumhos. We’re learning about the window of best performance, as are the Kumho experts here with us, and it only gets smaller as these temperatures rise.”
With two attempts and a total of 16 tires destroyed in two short hours between both cars, there was no choice but to pack it up and plan a return trip.
“We’re not done yet,” confirms Bernie Katz, co-founder of Viper Exchange. “The sweet spot in the weather is out there, and we have a small opportunity in the schedule next week to try and find it. The car has a six-minute fifty-something in there, and we’re still trying to find it.”
Dale Lomas is the man behind Nürburgring-dedicated news and info site Bridge To Gantry and lives on site at the track.
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