It was 9 months ago when I announced a competition - whoever comes closest of guessing McLaren MP4-12C laptime around Nurburgring Nordschleife, wins a "grand prize" worth spectacular 5 cents...
Rules were fairly simple - after application period was over, we had to wait until the end of June 2011 and the fastest MP4-12C laptime at that time would then be used as reference against all your guesstimations.
Summer came and went and McLaren were silent regarding anything related to Nurburgring Nordschleife. Porsche GT2 RS held a seemingly "unbeatable" 7:18, before it was beaten by Lexus LF-A and, just recently - Dodge Viper ACR.
And there was still no sign of McLaren.
Now it looks like waiting is over - Sport Auto latest issue includes "supertest" of MP4-12C. And as usual - that means inevitable Nordschleife lap time. With Horst von Saurma behind the wheel, McLaren MP4-12C did a 7:28.000 - spectacular laptime by any means, yet, at the same time, not "too spectacular" if not disappointing, when you realize that less powerful and less hyped Lexus LFA did far better 7:14.640.
So who came closest of guessing the time back in February? Not me! I bet on better result. I figured McLaren would make sure they beat GT2 RS, because anything less would not be good publicity at the time when they were launching the car and primary objective was to win some marketshare from the likes of Porsche who were already at the top of laptime charts.
So it wasn't me, or others with the same strategy. It turns out the winning bet belongs to member "F355" who was a lot less optimistic and predicted exactly 7:28.000 - perfect match!.
You might be wondering if he has supernatural predicting power, or maybe he just came up with a completely random number - I guess we'll have to ask the prophet himself!