AMG One Nürburgring Record

December 19th, 2022

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Doesn’t this car look immense!  The AMG One has become the fastest road-legal production car to run around Germany’s famous track, the Nürburgring.  The track is just shy of 21 kilometres long and is full of challenging corners with some scintillatingly quick straights thrown in for good measure.

The AMG One’s two-seat cockpit is accessed via doors that open up on the diagonal – forwards and upwards. The car’s seats are moulded into the structure of the car to save weight and are made of a magma grey nappa leather and black Dinamica microfibre.  The backrest can be adjusted to two different angles.  Despite the minimalist design, the AMG One comes with features like climate control, electric windows, an infotainment system, and a rear-view camera.

It is quite a car!  The exterior looks stunning, with the exterior having an airbrush finish to it that features hundreds of little three-pointed stars – like on the current Mercedes Formula One cars.  The car’s front wheels boast 19-inch rims, and the rear rims are 20-inch.  The push-rod spring struts are aluminium and can be adapted to three settings: Comfort, Sport and Sport Plus.  Anti-lock brakes, a three-stage stability control system, and a nine-stage traction control system all work in unison to keep the AMG One firmly in control and well-planted.  Shod with the best Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2R M01 tyres, there is a load of grip to be had.

The car’s ride height can be hydraulically dropped 37 mm at the front and 30 mm at the rear.  A Drag Reduction System has been implemented into the design for reducing downforce by around 20%.  The drag reduction works by closing the louvres over the front wheels and retracting the rear wing so that the car can accelerate to higher speeds more rapidly.  This feature, of course, is deactivated automatically when the driver hits the carbon ceramic brakes or takes on a corner.

Designed with a carbon-fibre monocoque structure, the platform helps to reduce the weight and enhance the car’s stiffness.  AMG has managed to keep the kerb weight of the AMG One down to below 1700 kg.  A lot of special work has been done in the aerodynamics department.  That’s why the AMG One has an active front splitter, a massive deployable rear wing, louvres that are visible over the top of each of the front wheels, and even a distinctive fin that runs down the backbone of the car.  All of these important components are there to enhance the flow of the air over and around the car.

The AMG One has four electric drive motors, and Mercedes say that the car has an all-electric range of 18.1 km.  Two of the electric motors (located at the front) also work a torque vectoring system across the front axle.  When the ICE engine is running at the same time as the electric motors, the car is in full AWD mode.  The ICE motor is a 1.6-litre turbocharged unit, derived from the 2015 Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team’s car.  This engine runs alongside the MGU-K hybrid system, giving the AMG One a combined power output of 782 kW.

The AMG One’s official performance stats include a 0-100 km/h time of 2.9 seconds, a 0-200 km/h sprint time of just 7.0 seconds, and a top speed of 352 km/h.

Maro Engel was the car’s driver for the record lap time, and he was able to run the AMG One around the Nürburgring in a record time of 6 min: 35.183 seconds.  This time is eight seconds faster than the previous record set last year by Lars Kern in a Porsche 911 GT2 RS MR.  Maro mentioned that the track conditions weren’t ideal at the time the record was set, suggesting that the AMG One could definitely run the lap faster still with better track conditions.