Every year, the editors at Car and Driver travel to the Virginia International Raceway (VIR) for a multi-day competition in which they pit the year’s hottest new performance cars against each other and see how each performs at one of the most challenging road courses in America.
This tenth year of the Lightning Lap featured the 2016 Shelby GT350R and many of its competitors both domestic and import, grouped into different classes by base price including performance-enhancing options.
The GT350R ran a best lap of 2:51.8 with the C&D editors behind the wheel, the fastest time of any vehicle in the competition’s LL2 class for cars priced $35,000 to $64,999. The time was faster than other notable vehicles including the 2017 BMW M4 GTS, 2016 Porsche Cayman GT4 and 2017 Audi R8 V10 Plus.
“It’s a brilliant track car with a balanced chassis and inexhaustible brakes. We love that every time the throttle opens, it sounds as if a million tiny hammers were being fired into the exhaust,” C&D wrote of the 2016 GT350R.
See the 2016 Shelby GT350R and its competitors’ results from the 2016 C&D Lightning Lap.