For years, some of the more committed car makers had been quietly logging Nürburgring Nordschleife lap times for internal benchmarking and the odd press release. But then in 2008, Porsche suggested Nissan had cheated, which turbocharged matters, if you’ll excuse the pun.
The environment became political, with lap times under new scrutiny. Suddenly company reputations were on the line, and that has since been the way of things, the essential R&D work existing alongside the PR warfare.
