Nurburgring lap time record competition proposed by James Glickenhaus

James Glickenhaus, the wealthy American who recently announced he plans to build a road-legal version of his Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus SCG 003 race car, has also told Autocar that he wants to launch a “Road Cup” competition at the Nürburgring Nordschliefe to discover which road-legal car is really quickest around there.

Annoyed by unverified manufacturer lap times, most recently Lamborghini’s claim that the Huracán Performante has posted a 6:52 time of the 12.7-mile circuit, Glickenhaus is proposing a competition to be run as part of the Nürburgring 24 Hour race (N24), with road-legal cars having to drive from Cologne, Germany to the Nürburgring on the same set of tyres that they then set a lap time on.

Glickenhaus himself admits that this may sound mad, and also that the Nürburgring authorities haven’t agreed to his idea yet. “They’re reading about it in the press,” he told Autocar at the Geneva show, “they’re going to be like 'what the hell is Jim doing?'”

Yet Glickenhaus has form here – he already endows a cup and prize that’s awarded to the fastest-qualifying car at the N24 race, and he’s already spent many millions of dollars developing and racing both the Ferrari P4/5 by Pininfarina and, more recently, his own SCG 003.

He’s also adamant that his newly-announced Stradale road-legal version, which will be limited to a run of three customer cars and which will cost $1.8m, will prove to be the fastest car around the Nürburgring.

“We know its [race] sister can do a 6:20 lap,” he told us. “It did that with 580hp, 100kg more downforce and half a g more lateral cornering ability. But this car weighs the same, has 300bhp and 250lb ft more.

"On race tyres it would be faster than the race car, but on road tyres it will be about 30sec per lap slower, so around a 6:40. That’s as fast as anyone’s going to go.”

Even if Glickenhaus gets his plan approved, we’ll have to wait until next year to see it. “My idea is to let them yell and scream,” says Glickenhaus of the N24 organisers.

“Then they’ll get over that and we’ll come back and race at the Nürburgring for next year. We’re going to do it.”

If he manages it, we’ll be there.