- Yep: Ford just set a blazing 6:57.685 Nürburgring lap time with its hot new Mustang GTD
- The big boast is this makes it the first American automaker to break the 7-minute barrier on the ‘Ring
- Plans are afoot to bring the Canadian-built car back to Germany to beat that lap time in 2025
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When the 2025 Ford Mustang GTD was unleashed to the world a couple of years ago, it was accompanied by a promise that the thing would set a monstrously rapid lap at the famed Nürburgring race track. Now, a new documentary called Road to the Ring celebrates the challenges and focus of tripping the lights to record a blistering 6:57.685 lap time in Germany.
For the uninitiated, a lap of the “Green Hell” requires negotiating 73 turns and 12.9 miles (just over 20.5 kilometres) over an undulating track that has a death-dealing combination of sinewy banked turns and rocket-fast straights. The Mustang GTD, built just outside of Toronto, Ontario by Multimatic, is only the sixth stock production sports car to complete an officially certified sub-seven-minute lap, according to ‘Ring records. At the wheel was Multimatic Motorsports driver Dirk Müller.
And the team isn’t done. “We’re proud to be the first American automaker with a car that can lap the Nürburgring in under seven minutes,” said Jim Farley, Ford President and CEO. “But we aren’t satisfied. We know there’s much more time to find with Mustang GTD. We’ll be back.” Ford says the only deviations from a stock GTD were the addition of a five-point harness and roll cage, gear which is mandated by the Nürburgring.
The Mustang GTD’s Nürburgring success is due to the work of a focused and dedicated team of engineers and designers, all of whom toiled over the course of two years to turn the Mustang GT3 race car into the road-legal Mustang GTD supercar. Ford documented its efforts in the lead-up to the timed Nürburgring run in a 13-minute documentary that dropped today on YouTube.
The psychotic Mustang GTD first broke cover in August 2023 packing 815 horsepower from its supercharged 5.2L V8 engine and the type of aero trickery usually reserved for the world’s top race tracks. To buy one, you’ll need to apply and be hand-picked by Ford through a similar type of rigmarole the Blue Oval put its customers through for the last-gen Ford GT.
Hey, it’s the company’s prerogative — and it must have worked, since it is said about 7,500 applications piled up for the production run of 2,000 cars. Only about a fifth of those applicants were North American, by the way.
Ford is building just 2,000 copies of the Mustang GTD, with the cost in Canada set at an estimated CDN$440,000, or US$325,000 Stateside.
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