Credit: Michele Scudiero / Drew Gibson Photography

When it comes to automotive bragging rights, a good Nürburgring Nordschleife lap time is right up there with the best of them. And today, those bragging rights belong to Ford. The automaker revealed that its GT Mk IV, an evolution of the mid-engined supercar it created in 2016, is now the fastest production car to ever lap the 12.9-mile (20.8-km) race track in Germany, with a time of 6 minutes, 15.997 seconds set by Frédéric Vervisch.

The century-old racetrack in Germany’s Eifel region was built during the Great Depression as a way to create jobs but also to provide Germany’s car industry with a place to test its products. In addition to races, it was—and remains—open to the public for leisure driving.

Well, for some definition of leisure: The place isn’t known as the Green Hell for nothing, with hundreds of feet of elevation change across 12.9 miles (20.8 km) and between 73–170 corners, depending how you count them. After years of driving it online, I got my first laps there last summer and can report that in real life, it is bumpy and narrow, and I’d need another hundred laps or so before I started to feel properly comfortable.

Which would still leave Vervisch on another plane. Along with his teammates, he won the 24 Hour race here in 2019 and 2022 and now has the outright fourth-fastest lap time across the Nordschleife; only Volkswagen’s battery-electric ID.R (6:05.336, driven by Romain Dumas in 2019) and Porsche’s hybrid 919 Evo (5:19.546 driven by Timo Bernhard in 2018) have gone faster this century, both beating Stefan Bellof’s 1984 qualifying time of 6:11.13, set in a Porsche 956 Group C race car. (Because Bellof’s time was set in qualifying, some don’t count it among the official records, so Ford can officially claim the GT Mk IV is the third-fastest car around the ‘Ring.)

“Driving the Ford GT Mk IV at the Nürburgring is an experience unlike any other,” Vervisch said. “The car is an absolute weapon, a true extension of your will. Every input is met with an immediate, precise response. Through the Kesselchen, over the Flugplatz, it just inspires confidence, allowing you to push harder and harder. You feel the history of the track, and you feel the immense capability of the Ford Racing engineers who poured their hearts into this machine. To set these records is a dream come true, a testament to what’s possible when passion meets precision.”

Ford will build a total of 67 GT Mk IVs, which commemorate the 1967 Le Mans-winning Ford GT 40 Mk4. A cool $1.7 million buys you a carbon-fiber chassis and adaptive spool dampers, plus a twin-turbo V6 with more than 800 hp (597 kW). But you won’t be able to use it as a daily driver. Unlike the Mercedes-AMG One, the next-fastest production car around the ‘Ring with a time of 6:29.090 and a machine that is street-legal in Europe and elsewhere, the GT Mk IV is for track use only.