The 03 Cyan Racing is China’s first Nurburgring record.
Photo by Lynk & Co
Honda’s Civic Type R used to hold the record for the fastest lap around Germany’s legendary Nurburgring race track for front-wheel-drive cars. Not any more. That record now belongs to China’s Lynk & Co, the first record the country has ever captured. And in doing so, the ‘Lynk & Co 03 Cyan Racing Concept,’ a complicated name for a complicated car, actually broke two records—one for the fastest in a front-drive car and the other for the fastest lap in a four-door sedan.
Posting a time of 7 minutes 20.143 seconds, the ’03’ beat the Civic Type R’s quickest time of 7 minutes 43 seconds by more than 20 seconds. Now I can almost see your eyebrows heading north as you ask the question, “Who is Lynk & Co? And how did they manage to create a machine capable of posting lap records?”
If you look into who is actually involved and where the team came from, this story could very quickly get complicated. But let’s do our best to keep it simple.
Lynk & Co is a start-up carmaker owned by China’s huge Geely Group, a conglomerate that also owns Volvo. The record-breaking Lynk & Co 03 sedan employs the same Volvo Compact Modular Platform as that found under the Volvo XC40. And the final crucial part of this story is that Cyan Racing is the official motorsport partner of Geely, a newly formed, highly competitive racing team that competes in the Europe-centered World Touring Car Cup (WTCR).
The 03 has already proved its potential by winning a WTCR race.
Photo by Lynk & Co
The ’03’ employs the latest Volvo tech and design from start-up Lynk & Co. Now while the performance and dynamics might be top-notch, the styling of the car, while sleek, incorporates a grille that is flat and simplified and headlights that appear to sit awkwardly on the front fenders. Compared to previous lap record-holders rivals from Renault and Honda, the 03’s design seems outdated and in need of a facelift. But that’s about its only questionable aspect because on the track, it’s a bullet.
Formerly known as Polestar, the Cyan Racing team has built its race car based on the road-going production 03 sedan which employs a 2.0-liter turbocharged 4-cylinder engine that pumps out 528-hp and 372 lb-ft of torque. The ’03’ can jump from zero to 62mph in 4.4 seconds and has a top speed of 190mph. The transmission is a 6-speed sequential gearbox with paddle shifters that permit lightning fast shifts in just 60-milliseconds. For the record, the name Polestar is now associated with Volvo’s high performance electric car arm.
Based in Sweden, Swedish-Chinese Cyan Racing sees the 03 car a potential winner, and aimed high from the start by hiring some of Sweden’s best racing drivers including former WTCR champion Andy Priaulx as well as that country’s most experienced racing engineers. That vision paid off as the team has already won its first WTCR race and captured a podium finish on at least two occasions.
Lynk & Co has announced three models so far intended for production, all based on the Volvo Compact Modular Platform. The vehicles include the ’01’ crossover, a China market-based car which began production in 2017 and the ’02,’ a slightly smaller crossover than the 01. The 03 sedan is expected to go on sale next year.
To help realize its zero-fatality Vision 2020 initiative, Volvo announced recently that it would cap the top speed of its cars to 112mph from 2020. That of course does not include Cyan Racing cars. Lynk & Co has realized that Nurburgring lap records and WTCR wins are excellent ways to raise brand awareness, and we can expect to see more from Chinese brands like Geely, Chery, Great Wall and Brilliance in the near future. This is just the beginning.
