New Honda Civic Type R smashes the front-wheel-drive Nurburgring lap record

The new Honda Civic Type R – revealed last month with 316bhp from its 2.0 litre VTEC engine – smashes the Nurburgring front-wheel-drive lap record.

It’s only a month since the ewn Honda Civic Type R was revealed, complete with an extra 10bhp – for a total of 316bhp – from its 2.0 litre VTEC engine and improved six-speed manual gearbox. And it’s already showing its credentials with a record-breaking lap at the Nurburgring.

Despite delivering just a modest power increase over its predecessor, the new Civic Type R has taken to the Nurburgring and easily broken the current lap record – held by the VW Golf GTI Clubsport S – by 5.41 seconds, for a new record time of 7min 43.8sec, a time almost 7.0 seconds quicker than the last Type R.

Clearly, there’s more at play than just the modest increase in power delivering such improvements on the ‘Ring, and it’s that combination of elements improving performance so much.

That includes a quicker six-speed manual gearbox, improved rigidity, new multi-link suspension at the back, improved drag and lift, longer wheelbase, wider track and even a small weight saving.

Ryuichi Kijima, lead chassis engineer for the new Type R, said:

Drivers typically enter the corner after Metzgesfeld at around 150 km/h. Even at this medium-speed corner, the speed is around 10 km/h higher due to the new Type R’s excellent stability. So, with improved cornering performance, we can increase the speed throughout the lap, helping the new Type R to achieve a much quicker lap time.

The new Honda Civic Type R goes in to production this summer at Honda’s plant in Swindon. No prices for the new Type R have been announced, but it will be more than the current £30k.