How Nürburgring laps are timed

A Nürburgring time in a headline is usually a flying lap of the Nordschleife, the north loop. Flying means the car is already at speed when the clock starts. It is not a standing start, and it is not a lap of the Grand Prix circuit glued onto the story unless the source says so.

The trap is the finish. For years the published “bridge to gantry” lap was about 20.6 kilometres. The full tourist lap used now is 20.832 kilometres and includes the T13 section. A car that stops the clock at the old gantry has not done the same piece of road as a car that completes T13. Putting those clocks in one list makes the shorter lap look faster for a reason that is mostly the map.

This site stores the clock the source printed, in seconds, and keeps the layout on the measurement. The 20.832 km list and the 20.6 km list are never ranked together. Series-production cars stay on their own list. A pre-production manufacturer record can be real and still be the wrong row for a “cars you can buy” ranking, so the status is stored beside the time: who drove, which tyres when the source names them, and whether the car was series production.

Manufacturers, magazines and specialist timing outfits have all published Nordschleife laps. The credible ones name the layout, the date and the car's specification. A video title that says “unofficial” and does not name the finish line is not a second layout we quietly convert. If the source does not say which finish it used, the lap does not get to pick one.

The same habit applies to the rest of the encyclopedia. A number without its conditions is a different, worse number. The Nordschleife just makes the conditions obvious, because two famous finishes are a few hundred metres apart and the clocks do not forgive it.