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The title of fastest American production car to lap the Nürburgring Nordschleife has changed hands once again, and this one comes with a major surprise. Not only has a Ford lapped the 'Ring quicker than the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1X, the car that did it is an entirely new Mustang GTD variant called the GTD Competition.
Ford's last GTD lap, already five seconds quicker than its previous attempt, came in at 6:52.072. The lap set by the Mustang GTD Competition drops 11 full seconds off that time, clocking in at 6:40.835 and beating a hand-timed benchmark that leaked last month. That is not just faster than the best laps by both the Corvette ZR1 and Corvette ZR1X, it is faster than every single production car to ever attempt a timed lap but one: the thousand-horsepower, Formula 1-engined Mercedes-AMG One hypercar.
Details on the car will have to wait for a future release, but Ford has sent out some highlights with this new lap time. The headlining change is an unknown increase in horsepower, enough to play a part in a serious increase in performance over a base GTD with 815 hp from its supercharged 5.2-liter V-8. Aero adjustments include a modified rear wing, front dive planes, and aero discs on the rear wheels. New, unspecified tires add additional grip, while weight savings off the original car's hefty mass come from magnesium wheels, carbon bucket seats, a lighter damper system, and what Ford calls "additional actions to help reduce weight."
The major upgrades mean that the Mustang GTD Competition has gone beyond even the major ambitions Ford set out for the car when the standard GTD was revealed back in 2023. Fortunately for buyers who did not get a chance to get their hands on one in the original wave of applications, Ford is following through on its promise last month to reopen GTD order books for Mustang GTDs today.
Ford
Those orders might not include this new Competition model, though. Ford says that the Mustang GTD Competition "will only be offered in the future as a special edition, street legal model available in strictly limited, serialized quantities."
In a release from Ford, CEO Jim Farley echoed his comments after C8-generation Corvette records were announced last year with a simple statement.
"When we said, 'Game On,' we meant it,” Farley said. "Mustang GTD was always meant to bridge the worlds between GT3 race cars and street-legal supercars," he continues, "and the GTD Competition takes this to the next level to continue keeping Europe’s elite up at night.”
Ford's release makes no direct mention of the C8 Corvette or the wave of record runs set on the Nordschleife by GM engineers last year. It does, however, contain one particularly pointed fact. The record lap was set by factory Mustang GT3 driver Dirk Müller, but Ford Racing engineer Steve Thompson also went out and set a time of 6:49.337. That number comes up just a tenth of a second short of GM engineer Drew Cattell's 6:49.275 in the ZR1X, effectively responding in advance to a potential Corvette enthusiast's future argument that the GTD Competition is only so much quicker because it ran with a pro driver.
Fred Smith's love of cars comes from his fascination with auto racing. Unfortunately, that passion led him to daily drive a high-mileage, first-year Porsche Panamera. He is still thinking about the last lap of the 2011 Indianapolis 500.