R1 smashes Nurburgring lap record

The fastest man on two wheels around the world famous 20km Nurburgring Nordschleife is now Andy Carlile, a Briton who completed the feat in just 7m10sec.

Carlile was riding a modified 2005 Yamaha R1, and his time is more than seven seconds better than the previous record from 2009, also set by Carlile on a K7 Suzuki GSX-R600.

The 7m10sec is measured bridge to gantry, and the full time is calculated at 7m24sec, but this is still very quick, and faster than a 2011 Nissan GT-R.

It would place the Yamaha YZF-R1 as the 13th fastest road-legal production vehicle around the Nurburgring, but it should be mentioned that Carlile could have gone faster - there was traffic to avoid during his ultra-quick lap - see the video below if you've got a spare seven minutes.

According to most lounge room critics, the fastest lap time set by a production car was the 6:48, recorded by Michael Vergers in a Radical SR8 LM.

How is Andy so quick? Well, the British rider moved to the Nurburgring in 2007 and claims to have completed a "few thousand laps" of 'The Green Hell' as it's sometimes known.

How did it all start? "Honestly, I was attracted to near-unlimited track access for the price of one year ticket. From there things just spiralled," Carlile told BridgeToGantry.com.

He started off working with Performance Bikes magazine changing tyres and working in hospitality and one thing lead to another. All of sudden he was lapping very quickly.

Carlile said the R1's engine is not modified but the chassis has seen lots of attention, with a lot of ergonomic work to make it comfortable at high speeds. It's also a lot lighter than the stock R1 too, with carbon wheels and so forth.

Here's the video: