Supriya Ghosh (Editor)

Sport auto (Germany)

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Categories
  
Newsmagazine

Circulation
  
59,800

Frequency
  
Monthly

Year founded
  
1969

Editor-in-Chief
  
Marcus Schurig (since 1 March 2013)

Publisher
  
Motor Presse Stuttgart GmbH & Co. KG

sport auto is a German automobile magazine, established in 1969, published monthly by Motor Presse Stuttgart, based in Stuttgart.

Contents

The magazine publishes its "Supertest" of cars, featuring the laptime at the Nordschleife. Until 2015 almost all supertest were done by Horst von Saurma, from 2015 laptimes are recorder by Christian Gebhardt. The magazine also runs a challenge for the fastest lap time driven with a car that is road legal (TÜV) and registered in Germany. The road legality rule also applies for the tires.

Racing participation

The journalists usually enter VLN and 24 Hours Nürburgring races, in cooperation with Honda or Aston Martin. Results are mixed, they caused at least two crashes.

Sport Auto Trophy

In 1995, the magazine introduced a Nordschleife lap record challenge for the fastest lap time driven with a car that is road legal, having passed German TÜV and is registered in Germany. The road legality rule also applies for the tires. After the trophy had been given to Blitz, a Japanese tuning parts company in 1997, sport auto editor Horst v. Saurma regained the record in 1999. After the sport auto record was lowered to 7:14 in 2005, sport auto announced to introduce rules according to their Hockenheimring-based Tuner GP event. In 2005, sport auto also clocked a 6:55 for a UK-registered Radical SR8 which is not eligible to sport auto's ranking.

5 Supersportler auf der Nordschleife

In 2008, five super sports cars owned by an enthusiast were compared by Porsche factory driver Marc Basseng, winner of several VLN races in Porsche GT3 RSR. Timing was provided by sport auto as in a Supertest. The results were also reported elsewhere.

Supertest Nordschleife

During the industry testing sessions in which sport auto records its "Supertest", the track can not be traveled at full speed past "Tribüne 13" (T13, grandstand 13) in order to allow safe access from the old exit/entrance there. The missing 232 m (761 ft) uphill section, from a slow right hand corner, would take in average an extra 7 s compared to a full lap.

There are 5 sections on the 20,600 m (67,600 ft) long Supertest-Nordschleife:

  • The first is 3,850 m (2.4 mi)
  • The second is 4,235 m (2.6 mi)
  • The third is 4,825 m (3.0 mi)
  • The fourth is 4,846 m (3.0 mi)
  • The fifth is 2,844 m (1.8 mi)
  • The total is 20,600 m (12.800 mi)
  • In recent tests, about 33 numbers are reported to judge a cars performance on various points of a Ring lap: speeds, braking deceleration and lateral g-forces. Sortable list of some Supertest times are provided online.

    References

    Sport auto (Germany) Wikipedia