Every year for a decade now, we've fried tires—and occasionally our nerves—on America's most demanding road course, Virginia International Raceway, to answer the ultimate performance-car question: What'll it do? The track doesn't care about marketing claims or badge snobbery; it treats every entrant equally harshly. This year we threw 18 cars (plus a few oddballs) into VIR's paved crucible. Here, then, is what they did.

And just like that, a decade is gone. It's been 10 years since our first Lightning Lap, 10 years since we endeavored to create a North American answer to the benchmark Nürburg­ring Nordschleife, where automakers take their fastest to joust for lap-time supremacy. It's possible that Virginia International Raceway's 4.1-mile Grand West Course will someday be displaced as the longest world-class road course in the U.S., being just a hair longer than Road America and just a smidge shorter than Belgium's Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, but we're here to stay. Ten years of data generated by 201 cars is the best kind of boat anchor, the long cable of comparative results keeping us tethered to this magnificent track for as long as people are interested in how fast the fastest new cars can go.

Our 2016 lineup has stark similarities to the one from November 2006. We had a Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 then; we have the new Shelby GT350R now. We had a Chevy Corvette and a Z06 then; we have the freshly unwrapped Corvette Grand Sport this year. Back then, we had a BMW M6, a Dodge Charger SRT8 and Viper SRT10, and a Porsche Cayman S; this year we have the M2 and M4 GTS, a ­Charger SRT Hellcat and a new Viper ACR, and a Cayman GT4. The cars may be getting faster—the quickest one then, 3:00.7; this year, 2:44.2—but the brands that invest in perform­ance have been remarkably consistent, because the people in charge of them know that 90 percent of establishing a bankable legacy is just showing up.

And show up they did, with 21 cars including a couple of track-only specials, which are not official LL1–LL5 class cars, and our own long-term 2015 Tesla Model S P85D because you, the readers, wanted to know how the big electric would do. Our usual assortment of classes ranges from LL1, for cars with sub-$35,000 base prices, up to LL5, for $245,000 and above. As a reminder, all the base prices you see on the following pages include perform­ance-enhancing options, such as carbon-ceramic brake rotors, lightweight components, performance tires, and even high-bolstered thrones.

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This year we tweak convention slightly by sequencing the cars here in finishing order, regardless of class. That's simply to create a more logical progression through the story, from slowest to quickest. Otherwise, our three-day lap-a-thon in the warm but blessedly dry days of early June went by the procedural book, with only a few harmless spins and some grass-cutting excursions but nary a chipped splitter.

Armed with Racelogic VBOX GPS data loggers in each car to record the copious data, the quintet of editors who drove for time were left to their own instincts (and advice from attending engineers, in some cases) as to how best to extract the quickest laps. As usual, morning was the golden hour, when the cold track and cool, dense air could work their magic on grip and power. Even so, experience proves that every bit of the three days is needed to whittle down the lap times to data and impressions we can stand behind. So without further ado, here they are.

Class Boundaries: LL1 up to $34,999 • LL2 $35,000–$64,999 • LL3 $65,000–$124,999 • LL4 $125,000–$249,999 • LL5 $250,000 and above • Other: A Tesla, a Race Car, and a Concept

LL1 (up to $34,999)

Marc Urbano, Michael Simari Car and Driver

LL2 ($35,000–$64,999)

Marc Urbano, Michael Simari Car and Driver

Marc Urbano, Michael Simari Car and Driver

Marc Urbano, Michael Simari Car and Driver

Marc Urbano, Michael Simari Car and Driver

Marc Urbano, Michael Simari Car and Driver

LL3 ($65,000–$124,999)

Marc Urbano, Michael Simari Car and Driver

Marc Urbano, Michael Simari Car and Driver

Marc Urbano, Michael Simari Car and Driver

Marc Urbano, Michael Simari Car and Driver

LL4 ($125,000–$244,999)

Marc Urbano, Michael Simari Car and Driver

Marc Urbano, Michael Simari Car and Driver

Marc Urbano, Michael Simari Car and Driver

Marc Urbano, Michael Simari Car and Driver

Marc Urbano, Michael Simari Car and Driver

Marc Urbano, Michael Simari Car and Driver

Marc Urbano, Michael Simari Car and Driver

LL5 ($245,000 and above)

Marc Urbano, Michael Simari Car and Driver

More from Lightning Lap 2016

Marc Urbano, Michael Simari Car and Driver

Marc Urbano, Michael Simari Car and Driver

Marc Urbano, Michael Simari Car and Driver

Lightning Lap Extras

Marc Urbano, Michael Simari Car and Driver

Marc Urbano, Michael Simari Car and Driver

The Rise of the Super Street Tire

The leap that street tires have made in performance since we started Lightning Lap is staggering. At the inaugural event in 2006, the hottest tire was the Dodge Viper SRT10's Michelin Pilot Sport, which hung on in Turn 1 at 1.01 g's. Last year, the Chevy Corvette Z06's Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 ZPs pulled 1.20 g's in the same corner. Michelin has been at the tip of the perform­ance spear for the last decade [see "Grip Leader Board" below]. According to Lee Willard, the tire designer responsible for the Corvette's Pilot Super Sports and Pilot Sport Cup 2s, Michelin has broken traditional tire compromises, such as the head-butting between wet and dry grip, with the use of advanced computer modeling. How advanced? Michelin's mathematical model of a single tire, or the computer file that fully encapsulates the tire's design and performance, is comparable to the size of a mathematical model for an entire car. Changing even a single filament in a cord—say, from high-strength steel to aramid, the stuff bulletproof vests are woven from—or even changing the cord's relative angle or weave results in a virtual tidal wave of other tiny changes no human could ever predict or compute. Running a computer simulation on four tires, a process that took months in the 1990s, now takes an hour, allowing engineers more time to fine-tune the final product. Willard also points out that the highest-perform­ance street tires are no longer peaky—i.e., ­dangerously losing traction midcorner. If this pace continues, street tires will soon have more grip than the 1.28 g's generated by the Yokohama slicks fitted on the Lexus proto-racer.

Grip Leader Board

Maximum grip in Turn 1 from every Lightning Lap

LL Tires Grip

No.1 Michelin Pilot Sport 1.01 g No.2 Pirelli P Zero 0.98 g No.3 Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 1.16 g No.4 Michelin Pilot Sport PS2 ZP 1.06 g No.5 Toyo Proxes R888 1.07 g No.6 Michelin Pilot Sport Cup ZP 1.07 g No.7 Michelin Pilot Super Sport 1.08 g No.8 Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 and Pirelli P Zero Trofeo R 1.16 g No.9 Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 ZP 1.20 g No.10 Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 ZP 1.19 g

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