The Nurburgring in recent years has become the benchmark for performance car testing. While “The Ring” has been around since the late 1920’s, and has long been a source of hotly contested racing rivalries in Europe, it is only within the last decade that it has become a household name for enthusiasts worldwide.

Unless a race is going on there is no official timing for the Nurburgring. Lap times therefore can sometimes be skewed by manufacturers depending on where they start and stop their own clocks. This can lead to questionable results when published or used for advertising and comparisons.

We’re saying all this because the guys over at SVTPerformance.com found one huge gem of Nurburgring footage recently. After a request was made for track footage of the 2013-2014 GT500, SVTP member SID297 found the footage of the GT500 taking on the infamous race course.

Sid says he talked with a few enthusiasts familiar with the ring, and that he was able to determine a starting and stopping point that is the general consensus among many for timing a lap. He added a timer to the video of the Shelby and came out with a time of 7:39.28. While Sid admits this is no replacement for having proper test equipment, like a vbox, it does represent at least a very good approximation of the GT50’’s capability, putting it well within striking distance of the new Z/28 which is GM’s latest “track bred” creation that comes stripped of insulation, A/C and other options in an attempt to shed weight and make it faster.

The video itself is nearly eight minutes of wide open throttle fun, that we can only dream of in a GT500. You can hear the Goodyear F1 rubber squalling through most of the corners, and the whine of the Eaton supercharger. There’s no data from the car, so we can only guess what the approximate top speed is on the back stretch, but we’d have to say it is likely well in excess of 160 mph from the look of things.

SVTP has a full write up on this video, and an interesting take on GM’s Z/28 Nurburgring test, which we won’t delve into here. You can read their analysis by following this link to the thread, and make sure to watch the video and enjoy the sweet sound of that 5.8 Trinity engine.