Sport Auto Magazine is the German magazine responsible for what many claim is the definitive independent test of a car at the Nurburgring. Manufacturers test their cars to the standards originally set by the Sport Auto Supertest and publish their results accordingly. The Sport Auto Supertest is then eagerly awaited as an independent verification or challenge of those manufacturers claims.

Sport Auto’s Nissan GT-R Supertest is due to be published in the upcoming weeks having recently been run after the first German / Euro specification Nissan GT-R deliveries. At the hands of editor Horst von Saurma (HvS) the GT-R is rumored to have produced a laptime of 7:38.

It’s no news to our readers that Nissan Chief Test Driver Toshio Suzuki has recently managed to push the GT-R to a 7:26.7 laptime, some 11-12 seconds quicker than HvS. Does this call into doubt the validity of Nissan’s claim? I argue the opposite and actually feel this lends more credibility to Nissan’s laptimes.

Given Suzuki-san’s obvious headstart of having developed the car from the beginning and having made hundreds of laps at the ‘Ring in the GT-R it is not a surprise he is quicker than a magazine editor around the same track. Even if that magazine editor is the veteran of hundreds of his own laps in various other cars.

So Sport Auto manages 7:38 but let’s revive a dead horse for some more beating… Porsche has claimed in the past that they could not do better than 7:54, despite proof from Nissan, and have recently backed themselves again and repeated the comment. Any comment from Porsche on this most recent test….. ?