Alfa Romeo Confirms 4C Nurburgring Time with Video

Unfortunately, the video of the new Alfa Romeo 4C tearing around the nearly 13 mile Nürburgring Nordschleife is not of the variety where we get to watch the driver tackle all of the 154 corners in real time. Instead, this video offers up about 2 minutes of highlights from the record run as experienced ‘Ring racer Horst von Saurma takes the 4C around the world’s most famous and most intense road course in jeans and a t-shirt. Oddly, the 4C being tested is heavily clad in what appears to be electrical tape that is covering some of the body gaps around the new Alfa Romeo sports car but it also appears to cover some of the fine body lines – suggesting to me that this taped up treatment is more about creating discussion than it was improving aerodynamics. In the long run, the minor amount of drag created by those body gaps hardly seems like enough of a harm to spend the time covering them with oddly placed electrical tape. It should be noted that in addition to the odd tape job, the 4C used to turn in these impressive Ring times was also equipped with the optional high performance Pirelli tire upgrade but since those tires can be ordered as stock, they do not count as a performance upgrade…or at least not one that would prevent a “stock” 4C from getting very near the 7 minute barrier.

In addition to officially verifying that the Alfa Romeo 4C can lap the Nürburgring in 8:04.4, this video gives us our best look yet of the new Italian compact sports car in action. In addition to the roar of the powerful 4 cylinder engine as it zips along the German race track, we get to see how effortlessly the 4C handles some of the world’s best known racing corners. We also get a variety of looks at the new Alfa’s high tech thin film transistor (TFT) gauge cluster in action with the bright yellow tachometer bar in action around the central G meter, the gear indicator and the speed – which is displayed in this video in kilometers per hour.

As we mentioned earlier this month, the Alfa Romeo 4C is now officially the quickest 4-cylinder car to ever lap the Nürburgring Nordschleife with the exception of the barely-street legal Caterham R500 Superlight that is really just an open wheel race car with a few safety features added to make it legal for public roads in some areas. However, within the realm of cars that are legal in most major automotive markets, the Alfa 4C is the quickest 4-cylinder engine around the ‘Ring. A time of 8:04.4 also makes the 4C the fastest car with less than 250 horsepower to tackle the Nürburgring Nordschleife course…as it packs “only” 240 horsepower but the results from the Ring testing shows that not every sports car needs 500 horsepower to be very, very fast.