Whenever one peruses a list of Nürburgring Nordschleife record runs, the name Sport Auto pops up in good succession. The German magazine has conducted a great number of tests at the legendary circuit with some seriously convincing lap times in its history, be it a Gumpert Apollo or a Porsche 918 Spyder . Now, there's a new lap record to join the ranks, the 7:10.9 time clocked by the writer and racing driver Christian Gebhardt in a Mercedes-Benz AMG GT R just days ago.The laptime published by Daimler-Benz today is the quickest run managed by a production sports car in a Sport Auto test. The AMG GT R beat the 918 Spyder by several seconds and left a 2016 Lamborghini Huracan LP610-4 far behind. The latter 7:28 time was also set by Gebhardt. To put the AMG lap time in context, it inched under the 7:11 time set by Mika Häkkinen in the McLaren F1 XP5 prototype in 1996 – a mean feat, but it shows how blistering Häkkinen's run must have been 20 years ago. The production car record is still held by Marc Lieb in a 2013 918 Spyder with a respectable 6:57 lap time, but that was merely observed by Sport Auto, not conducted by them. The aforementioned Gumpert did a lap in 7:11.57.