Motown muscle cars Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Corvette have sauntered into Porsche and Mercedes’ backyard in recent years to set new benchmarks for sportscar performance at the Nürburgring race track.
Now Porsche has struck back on U.S. soil.
The German brand announced this week a Porsche 911 GT2 RS has broken the Corvette C8 ZR1’s production car lap record at Road Atlanta Raceway with a time of 1.22.6 minutes. The record comes just two months after Ford shattered Porsche’s production lap record at Nürburgring (only the limited-edition Mercedes AMG One is quicker) with its Mustang GTD. Corvette’s ZR1 has posted competitive Nürburgring times as well.
Ford and Chevy are following European makes like Porsche, Mercedes and Ferrari with global GT3 racing programs. Lap records by the race cars’ production variants have become a benchmark of brand cred as they sell in foreign markets. By the same token, the United States is Porsche’s biggest global sales market and Mercedes’ second largest.
Dubbed “The Green Hell” for its diabolical 12.9-mile, 170-turn layout, Nürburgring is regarded as the world’s most challenging course and is the global testing benchmark. On this side of the pond, Road Atlanta is one of North America’s iconic tracks and host to Petit Le Mans every October — the grand finale of the IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship that attracts the world’s premier sportscar drivers.
The high-speed, 2.5-mile, 12-turn track is just 60 miles from Porsche’s Atlanta North America headquarters.
The rear-engine Porsche’s Road Atlanta lap record just nipped the mid-engine, 1,064-horsepower, twin-turbo-V8-powered 2026 Corvette ZR1’s record by 2/10s of a second. Both cars were run on state-of-the-art, sticky Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2R production tires. The lap times were just four seconds off the fastest qualifying laps set by their stripped-down, slick-tire-shod GT3 racing siblings set at last fall’s Petit Le Mans.
Significantly, the turbocharged, 700-horsepower, flat-6-cylinder Porsche GT2 RS is a 2019 model updated with a so-called Manthey Kit, which provides suspension, brake and aerodynamic upgrades similar to Corvette’s track-focused, factory-installed ZTK package (Manthey Kit is a Porsche-approved, dealer-installed option). As significantly, the Porsche was driven by former FIA GT3 World Champion Jörg Bergmeister, current Porsche brand ambassador.
“The power delivery of the twin-turbo flat-six engine is still thrilling,” said the German driver of the 911’s top model trim. “The enhancements to chassis and increased amount of downforce allowed me to carry speed deep into the corners and accelerate early, giving me great confidence — which is also a benefit for regular drivers who take to the track.”
Chevrolet, on the other hand, has insisted on setting lap times with Corvette race engineers behind the wheel — including its Nürburgring lap last year with Lead Vehicle Dynamics Engineer Brian Wallace in the pilot seat.
In addition to its Road Atlanta mark set last year, Wallace and his fellow Corvette engineers also set production lap records at Virginia International Raceway, Road America (Wisconsin) and Watkins Glen International (New York).
In March, Ford strapped Le Mans-winning pro driver Dirk Müller into a 815-horse, supercharged-V8 Mustang GTD to set its Nürburgring mark of 6.40.8 minutes, making it the fastest American production car to ever lap the “Ring — though the lap was 11 seconds shy of the multimillion-dollar, 1,049-horsepower AMG One, a low-volume, mid-engine cyborg based on Formula One technology.
Just to prove a point, Ford brought its own freak, the mid-engine Mk IV — based on the production Ford GT — to Nürburgring to obliterate the Merc record with an insane lap of 6.15.9 minutes.
Ford raced the GT internationally until 2019. It now competes with V8-powered variants of the internationally-sold Mustang in series from North America’s Mustang Challenge to the GT3 World Endurance Championship and its signature event, the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France. General Motors, too, now offers the Corvette for sale globally (including in right-hand drive markets like Japan) and competes in global GT3 series.
“We came back to motorsports after the” Great Recession, GM President Mark Reuss told The Detroit News this month. “(It) really taught GM and our employees how to win again. We learn every week and bring (learnings) back into our road cars. Whether it’s the internal-combustion engine, aerodynamics, or the battery pack, (racing gives) back value to the customer.”
In addition to setting the outright production car lap record in the GT2 RS, Bergmeister also recorded a 1.23.9-minute lap in a 2025 911 GT3 RS — a Road Atlanta record for naturally-aspirated production cars.
“Cornering speeds are on the level of GT-class race cars,” said the German. “The suspension soaks up curbs really well . . . and the braking is on another level.”
Henry Payne is auto critic for The Detroit News. Find him at hpayne@detroitnews.com or @HenryEPayne.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Porsche breaks Corvette Lap Record
Reporting by Henry Payne, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
