Commercial Break: Quick Nick Lapped the ‘Ring

Michael Schumacher drove his old Mercedes-Benz F1 W02 on the Nurburgring last weekend.

As cool as it is to see a modern F1 car on the ‘ring, why does it always have to be attached to a PR event? How fast could an F1 car drive if it were set-up for the track, and the driver was given the go ahead to put in a lap that would set the time sheets on fire and not for company B roll commercial footage? The closest we’ve recently come to that pursuit of speed happened in the 2007. Nick Heidfeld and his year old BMW-Sauber F1.06 went awfully quick around the ‘ring. Quick, but not the fastest he could have gone. Heidfeld still had to pose for slower chase camera cars. His car’s top speed was limited to 275kph-the team set up the transmission so no higher speed could be attained. Lastly, his lap was made on hard demonstration tires and that severely masked Heidfeld’s true pace. BMW Engineers estimated their car could lap the ring in a blistering 5.15, but that time only exists on the hard-drive of a now-defunct team someplace.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA2yYohW1Vs?rel=0]