Volvo broke a Nurburgring record last year - but didn’t tell anyone

The Volvo S60 Polestar broke the four-door lap record at the Nurburgring last year, but the company kept it a secret.

The Swedish manufacturer’s racing team – Cyan Racing – stayed behind after the 2016 Nurburgring 24-hour race to undertake testing. And a few days before it returns to the legendary German race track for the 2017 event, it has revealed that it inadvertently broke a lap record.

In a new promotional video, it said: “Although not the original intention, the S60 Polestar engineered by Cyan Racing broke the lap record for road-legal four-door cars at the Nurburgring.”

The saloon car recorded a time of 7m 51s, beating the BMW M4 by nearly a second. However, since then the Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio has obliterated that record with a time of 7m 39s.

So why didn’t the team jump on this marketing opportunity like most other manufacturers? According to the video narrator: “Being Swedish, we didn’t want to shout about the record, just learn from the experience.

“The learnings were so important, not only for the road car, but also for the race team, that we had to keep it secret for a full year.”

Although great for bragging rights, Nurburgring lap records should always be taken with a pinch of salt. There is no governing body overseeing the timing, and no regulations to adhere to.

Lap times are generally ‘proved’ via on-board videos and sometimes telemetry to back up the footage. Manufacturers often remove items such as the stereo and air conditioning units because they add safety equipment and need to equalise the extra weight.

An unwritten code has developed that allows such modifications, while it’s generally accepted that the tyres used must be an option for customers to avoid racing tyres being used.