The Nürburgring has a new front-driven champion*

Meet the fastest front-wheel-drive car around the Nürburgring. Yup, when Renault claimed the record with its latest Megane Trophy R recently, it was probably keeping its eye on Honda and VW as the enemies who'd nab it back. We suspect it wasn’t keeping tabs on Cyan Racing.

That’s the artist formerly known as Polestar – before the name switched from a touring car team to the maker of electrified road cars – and its Lynk & Co 03 Cyan Concept has lapped the Nordschleife in 7m 20.143s. Former World Touring Car champion Thed Björk was on driving duties. Good Scandi name, that. 

It’s chopped 20 seconds from the Trophy R’s record, then, and sits within two seconds of Jaguar’s four-door record with the Project 8 saloon.

There’s a caveat here, though, and that’s the word ‘Concept’. “Cyan Racing have developed the Lynk & Co 03 Cyan Concept as a road car version of the race car run by the team in the World Touring Car Cup,” says the bumf, and the 03 is described as ‘mass production-based’.

So while we’re hugely impressed they’ve channelled 528bhp through only the front axle of a car – and made it work very nearly as well as a near-600bhp all-wheel-drive Jag around the ‘Ring – the 03 is essentially a touring car with number plates, and until we can buy something largely identical with actual money, it surely has to sit in another category of records to both the Megane and Project 8.

Do you agree? Or is the unregulated world of ‘Ring times so open to loophole-abuse that it doesn’t matter?