People love to drive the wheels off all kinds of vehicles on the Nürburgring. If you didn’t know, the German track even has a record lap for commercial vehicles, set by Sabine Schmitz in a Ford Transit van on the Top Gear TV show. Following her record lap of 10 minutes and 8 seconds, the talented female driver was adamant that was the most a standard van could do around Nürburgring.

But what about a tuned van? VW Group tuning specialist Revo decided to test a modified VW T5 on the Nürburgring and managed to break Sabine’s record, setting a lap of 9 minutes and 57.36 seconds. This was all the more impressive given that the T5 covered the full circuit, which is around a mile (1.61 km) longer than the “bridge to gantry” lap time set by Sabine Schmitz.

The modified T5 is powered by the 2.0-liter Twin Turbo Diesel upgraded to 220 horsepower thanks to the addition of a bespoke ECU remap, Milltek “turbo-back” exhaust system and a Forge intercooler/oil cooler combination. The chassis has also been tuned by adding Bilstein’s B14 coilover kit, Team Dynamics wheels and a set of sticky road legal Direzza tyres from Dunlop.

The van was driven by Nürburgring veteran Dale Lomas, who admitted that Revo’s request was one of the more leftfield and exciting. “The thing is an absolute hoot, and surprisingly nimble and compliant,” he said. You can follow the record lap in the video below.

By Dan Mihalascu

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