Dodge Viper Headed Back to the Nurburgring This Week

Last month, a team of Dodge Viper lovers traveled from the US to Germany in an effort to set a new production road car record at the Nurburgring with the 5th gen Viper American Club Racer. While the results were pretty solid – with Dominik Farnbacher laying down a 7:03 lap and setting a new record for American cars, manual transmission cars and rear wheel drive cars – the team had limited track time due to unrelenting rain and some odd mechanical issues.

As soon as the team headed back to the States, the organizers of the Dodge Viper ACR Nurburgring record attempt announced that they were hoping to head back to Germany in August, provided that they could raise the money to do so. Keep in mind that this record effort is financially supported fully by fans online (who contributed to the GoFundMe account) and those companies who stepped up to help make this happen, so the money needed to make another run at the Ring record would need to come from fans and corporate sponsors.

Fortunately, the sponsors and “Viper Nation” once again rose to the occasion, raising enough money for the Dodge Viper team to head back to Germany with hopes of clear skies – and that trip is set to happen later this week.

Viper ACR Ring Record – Take 2
If you have been following along with our coverage of the Dodge Viper ACR Nurburgring record effort, you likely know that the first trip to Germany was plagued with rain and unusual mechanical issues. After rain shortened their practice sessions and interfered with their actual wide-open record runs, Dominik Farnbacher was able to get one good lap and on that sole attempt – he ran a 7:03. He made another run later during the trip, but when a communication component fell from behind the dash and lodged itself behind the clutch and brake pedal, that run was effectively ruined. While fixing the communication component, it started to rain and the team packed it in and headed home.

If not for the repeated rain storms and the unusual mechanical headaches, Farnbacher and the Dodge Viper ACR team most likely could have shaved at least a couple seconds from that 7:03 lap time, but that didn’t happen – on the first attempt.

This time, the Dodge Viper team is headed back to the Nurburgring with more information and more drivers, so when they hit the track later this week – there could be a record in the making. In addition to Luca Stoltz and Dominik Farnbacher, Mario Farnbacher will also handle some driving duties in the Dodge Viper ACR Extreme supercars provided by the Viper Exchange. While the driver certainly wasn’t the problem, having an extra set of experienced hands on site can’t hurt.

More importantly, the team has studied their various tuning parameters from the last trip to the Nurburgring, and they believe that the aero bits on Farnbacher’s car (the one which ran a 7:03) can be tweaked for less drag and a greater top speed. The organizers believe that this aerodynamic adjustment alone could lead to an improvement of 1.5-2 seconds, pushing the Viper ACR ever closer to a 6-minute lap.

Of course, we will keep you posted on the progress of the Dodge Viper ACR Nurburgring record team, so stay tuned for what could be a new world record announcement.

Image: The Viper Ring Record Run Powered by Kumho and Co-sponsored by Prefix Facebook Page