2021 Mustang Mach 1 Laps Nurburgring in 7:58.29 Min - by Sport Auto

[Waldo Jeffers]

Just my two cents, a few hints from someone, who raced the ring personally with motorbikes and a car and with 20years experience from trackdays and hobby-races on motorbikes.

* a lap on the ring is 20.8km (about 12.93mls) long. Even if you are an experienced track day driver or Racer, you need a big deal of laps and routine, to become a fast driver on that track. 3mls lap distance as many random tracks have, or nearly 13mls like the ring make a huge difference. Being an experienced driver alone won't even help you to lap very fast, you need a very fast, experienced driver in front of you or sitting in your car to help you learning the tricks in some corners. The track is tricky, it covers all the difficulties you may expect on any random public road. So there may be a big difference in laptimes, that count for the drivers and nothing else. Differences between fast, ring-experienced drivers and other fast, but not so ring-experienced drivers are bigger than on any other circuit in the World.

* lap times can be deceiving, as there are two different ways laptimes are set. A whole lap is rarely to bet set, only when the track is closed to the public. If the track is open for public, which is the fact most of the times, some areas are restricted, so lap times then are counted "from bridge to gantry" or in short BTG.
BTG-Times are "faster" because they don't cover a full lap. Some people mistake BTG-laptimes as full laptimes. I don't know if all the fast laptimes in the lists cover a full lap.

* Due to the long distance of a lap and the landscape with many altitude changes and changes in the wheather and wind conditions in one lap you will encounter different temperatures in one lap, as well as different grip levels, which makes it harder to compare lap times that were set on different days. You may experience heavy rain and a sunny sky with a dry road surface in one lap.

*Tyres are critical, especially in conjunction with wheather conditions. The same tyre name can be totally different in the US and Europe. For instance, the stock US-Pirelli Pzero, that was used on 2015-2017 models , was a totally different tyre than what european customers knew about "Pzeros" that were sold in Europe. The Michelin PS4s is a good sport tyre for a daily driver but far from being a trackday-capable tyre. Only suitible for the ring in cold wheather conditions. A better tyre can easily rip off 10 or 15 or even more seconds from your laptimes.

*Please take into account, that the Mach1 being tested was a european model. European Mach1 are different from the original US cars. European models of the Mach1 lack some 20hp and some Nm too and there are some more other minor differences like a "opf" a particle filter located after the headers which is known for raising engine temperatures, as one example.

*Any driver, that laps a full lap on the ring in less than 8 minutes, is fu*king fast, regardless of the car he sitz in, hands down! Anyone who likes to disagree should do the ring personally before arguing.

*Speaking with the experience of 5 years and about 50,000mls with my personal car (you can take it away only from my cold, dead hands) that has been equipped with a KW v3, Eibach sway bars and a full load of Steeda and some BMR and FPP parts, plus dba brakes and lightweight rims, any stock Mustang is just a "base kit" that needs to be modified for full function.
Isn't that a Mustang Tradition since 1964?
The Mach1 is very much better in Stock condition than a normal GT, but still it is only kinda basic. So any given Mustang has a greater potential for improvements in Performance and laptimes than most other sportscars. Which makes a comparison to any BMW m-Model, any Mercedes AMG or any Porsche unfair. Not to mention the huge difference in price tags here in Germany between a Mach1 and the other mentioned competitors. If I needed a sports car with fixed roof, it was an US-Mach1 premium.

 

[Hack]

If we want people to have correct information, that's not the only kind of stall.

Pull the nose up at too low a speed and the airplane stops making lift, and goes into free-fall.

The stall you're talking about means you still have control of the plane, you just can't climb. You do that on purpose when you're landing.

The stall I'm talking feels like falling off a cliff, and if you do it on purpose you give yourself a thousand feet or so of room for recovery.

Yes this is true, but explaining the why will help people. There is an operating window where a wing makes lift proportional to air velocity, but there are also flow regimes outside of that operating window where lift is not governed by the same relationship.

My point remains. If we know downforce at a given speed, we can calculate it at any. That value might be quite low, but it will be.

The generation of lift from an airfoil depends on the flow of air over the airfoil. At low speeds the air might not stay attached to the airfoil. In that case, there will not be lift generated by the airfoil.

This is what stalling is. When there is too great of an angle of attack between the airfoil and the wind that is hitting the airfoil. At a low speed, you need to have a small angle for the air to stay attached and have a laminar flow along the airfoil. When the airspeed is sufficient, you get that laminar flow and the wing starts to generate lift.

So I disagree that it is a percentage.

And don't even get me started on Reynold's numbers. Fluid flow has weird behavior and it isn't always intuitive what will happen. It's even extremely difficult to predict with high-powered computers. That's why we see videos of Ford using wind tunnels to test different shapes. Wind tunnels are still useful.

The ring is a lot of straights too, long ones where you can really stretch your legs. I still feel 7:40 for HP car.

The speed you achieve on a straight and how long you are at or above that speed will depend on corner exit speed. Better tires not only help you in the corners, they also make the straights faster. The 'ring has a lot of corners.

I have no idea how fast the Mach 1 would be with better tires, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if it could set a time less than 7:30 with the right tires and suspension mods. That's why Ford won't publish 'ring times, because it's too easy to cheat using super stiff suspension and better tires. I'm fairly certain that some cars with really fast times were not using all stock equipment to achieve those times.

 

[TeeLew]

Yes, in speeds below 3mph (assuming we don't have a stiff breeze), where laminar flow might actually exist, our downforce numbers may be inaccurate. If you're actually on the racetrack and care about the number, though, it's exactly how I state, a squared function (I don't know where you got percentage).

GTFOH, with laminar flow on a racecar. It doesn't exist in any situation where we might care.

 

[Hack]

Yes, in speeds below 3mph (assuming we don't have a stiff breeze), where laminar flow might actually exist, our downforce numbers may be inaccurate. If you're actually on the racetrack and care about the number, though, it's exactly how I state, a squared function (I don't know where you got percentage).

GTFOH, with laminar flow on a racecar. It doesn't exist in any situation where we might care.

My assumption is a lot higher speeds than 3 mph, but I have no idea. It might be 30 or 50 or even 75 mph when certain shapes on our cars start generating down force. I agree you didn't say percentage and I stated it wrong. You are right that lift produced by an airfoil varies by the square of the wind velocity (in the regime where the airfoil produces lift). Since drag also varies by square of velocity and EPA economy ratings matter to Ford, my assumption is it's most important to Ford to reduce drag at highway speeds.

You really want laminar airflow, however. Otherwise you end up with a lot more drag and poor fuel economy.

I think that's what they are doing when they release smoke and let it flow along various surfaces of cars when they are testing in a wind tunnel. They are looking for turbulence and then they will iterate changing shapes to try to reduce the turbulence and get back to laminar flow where ever possible.

 

[TeeLew]

You're using words you don't understand. There is no laminar flow on a car that we care about. It's all turbulent. There are actual definitions concerning these words, it's not just me being pedantic.