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Behind The Blue Oval Lapping Cars At The Nurburgring

It is no secret that in recent years the Nurburgring has become the premiere destination for auto manufacturers and some automotive journalists to put cars to the test on one of the world’s most challenging and dangerous tracks.

In Ford’s latest Behind The Blue Oval video, we get to meet Paul Wijgaerts, a Ford Performance car specialist, whose job title sounds like a dream description to many of us. Essentially Wijgaerts gets to drive and test the latest performance cars in the Ford stable, and develop and improve ho the car performs, with respect to both the engine and transmission. For Wijgaerts this includes lapping the Nurburgring to throughly test new cars.

Wijgaerts tells us in the video that the Nurburgring is pretty humbling, saying right off the bat that the first time most people will come here and drive it, they’ll wonder how they can ever drive it at high speed. This statement he says included him. He also says that while some professional drivers say you need at least 100 laps to know your way around this track, you’ll need at least 1,000 to be able to drive it at speed.

The video itself is just a few small snippets of on-track footage from “the ring” with Wijgaerts behind the wheel. It’s apparent he takes a lot of pride in his job, stating that he’s out to beat his competitors. He ends by saying that if an owner is sitting at home at night and starts thinking about driving their Ford tomorrow, then he’s done his job properly. It’s nice to know that Ford’s engineers are so passionate about what they do.