British supercar manufacturers Ultima Sports Ltd celebrated their 15th year anniversary in style by obliterating the road car lap record on the track, which is used by Top Gear to record their lap times, by over four and a half seconds in their standard production Ultima GTR720 road car. This was a record previously held, according to the Top Gear chart, by the Swedish Koenigsegg CCX.

Since then, other cars have been around the track faster than the Koenigsegg, but they still haven't come close in matching the Ultima GTR's time.

Richard Marlow, Director of Ultima Sports Ltd commented:

"It came as no surprise to any of us here at the factory that on our very first hot lap in the Ultima GTR the best time set according to the Top Gear chart was well and truly beaten leaving all other supercars in it's wake which accurately demonstrates the all round performance envelope of the Ultima GTR. I always knew that the GTR could outperform all the supercars on the top gear chart with ease by a simply huge margin. The fully verified lap time data shows that in a head to head race with the £450,000 Ferrari Enzo the Ultima GTR would lap it every 12 laps according to the times stated on the Top Gear chart! What we have achieved over the last few years with this and all of our previous officially verified world record runs is a clean sweep of the majority of recognized performance parameters in existence all held at the same time.

The Ultima GTR720 tested is a full road going car with compliant suspension and often used as a daily driver. All the vehicles produced by Ultima Sports Ltd have the usual road luxuries such as air conditioning, ICE, leather trim, sealed luggage carrying compartments and of course road car levels of ground clearance suitable for speed humps and other road obstacles. The Ultima GTR720 is equipped with a standard 5 speed Porsche G50-03 transmission and a standard production option 720bhp engine from the OE engine suppliers American Speed.

The Ultima GTR720 recorded a blistering 1min 9.9secs lap time, which demolishes the previous record of 1min10.7secs set by seven-time world Formula 1 champion Michael Schumacher in his £1million Ferrari FXX track car. To put things into perspective the Ultima is almost 10 seconds per lap faster than the fastest road car that Ferrari produces which is the renowned £450,000 Enzo which has been timed around the track in 1min19.0secs.

The successful lap record attempt was independently timed, verified and recorded by Plans Motorsport using their GPS DL-1 data logging equipment. It wasn't a test conducted by Top Gear TV themselves as the producers have seemingly ignored repeated requests to feature the British Ultima GTR to date.

Ted Marlow, Managing Director of Ultima Sports Ltd commented:

"Well what can I say? I have been driving Ultima's now for over 25 years in hundreds of different Ultima cars with a huge range of different configurations and so I was pretty confident that the GTR720 would do the business.

The Enzo FXX is no ordinary Ferrari having been developed using Formula 1 technology and extensively tested by the 7 times Formula 1 world champion so to beat this lap time certainly proves the magnitude of our achievement.

What's next? Well we are all very content and absolutely delighted here at the factory. Over the past several years we have set a catalogue of world beating times including several world speed records which remain unbeaten. We have superb worldwide demand for our product with full order books and this is where we will focus our time and effort by continuing to provide our existing loyal customers and new customers with a first class service. Previous testing has shown that we can also take the Nurburgring lap record with a road legal lap time somewhere in the region of 6mins30secs which sure is tempting to prove someday although there are no plans set as yet......