Many moons ago (or, like a year or so ago) the staff was sitting here in the 0-60 offices, having an argument a discussion. My position in said discussion, was that anyone could go out and do a lap of the Nürburgring in under 10 minutes—assuming that they had a car with enough power and that wasn’t life-threateningly difficult to drive. Of course, everyone else decided to hate on that notion, claiming that there was absolutely no way that was a realistic claim.

But then, in the early fall of 2009, two members of our staff were over in Germany on assignment and took an Opel Astra OPC “Nürburgring Edition” for a few laps of the ‘Ring and lo and behold, they juuust cracked the 10-minute mark.

Now, you would have thought that by them doing so, in a car that was a tarted up hot-hatch, would have proven my side of the argument that anyone could achieve this feat given the proper equipment. But nope, the consensus was that while they had achieved a sub-10 lap time in a car that didn’t feature an overabundance of power, there was no way that I could have done the same, even in something more powerful. Haters.

Fast-forward to last Monday. I found myself at the Nürburgring, as a guest of Aston-Martin, getting ready to drive their V12 Vantage (which they just announced would be coming to America). Any impressions I have on the car are embargoed for a bit still, but I can tell you that it’s pretty damn awesome. Anyway, so there I sat, trackside, eating goulash, white sausages (mmmm, veal!) and soft pretzels, getting ready for my first experience with the famed ‘Ring. The way the day played out was as follows: food, two laps as a passenger in a V12 Vantage with some guy who was an ex-Zakspeed Viper racer and who is now Ring Taxi driver, two laps doing lead and follow, one lap as a passenger in an N24 Vantage racecar with a guy named Wolfgang and two final laps doing lead and follow. Needless to say, by the end of the day my mind was blown. The Nürburgring is 100% worthy of all of the hype associated with it. It’s big, it’s intimidating and it’s dangerous. Doing 170 mph down the straight after Döttinger Höhe, you can feel the unevenness in the pavement—as well as see it—and yet, you do as the instructor had done earlier and you use it as a time to check your gauges and mirrors and make sure everything is still operating correctly. It’s absolutely ridiculous, yet feels oh so right.

Anyway, when all was said and done, I managed to snag some video footage of my 3rd lap during the lead and follow. This is where I’d like to let the record show that I, in all of my ham-fisted glory, managed to do a complete lap of the circuit in 9 minutes, 35 seconds. Keep in mind this was with pulling to the side early on as a group to let Aston’s latest racecar, the N24 Rapide entry, go past, slowing down for a portion to try and allow the last journalist in the group (there was one car behind me that he was in) to try and catch up after he fell behind, and in general me botching up whatever the correct line was to take around this 14-mile loop.

And now, without further ado, my sub-10 minute lap of the Nürburgring.

Additionally, I’ve included some pictures I snapped along the way. The “track” that day had been chartered by Aston Martin to allow for some 24 Hours of Nürburgring testing and prep, this V12 Vantage drive for journos and a few laps of the Lexus LFA entries (a benefit of working on the Cygnet together). Enjoy!