They had the chance to really enjoy the day and do something a little special, but from what I'm reading I bet even Nick would rather have been at home.
i would say if they really pushed it and had the car setup perfict and had a good driver low 5mins maybe 4's would be do able but i dont think their is a person on earth that has enough skill combinding with a death wish to attempt it
I don't think anyone really expected them to go full chat... did they?
Nick would have probably easily gone significantly faster but that's not what the team were there to do, nor did they want him to with the risk that something might break and put him out for the season.
It's a shame, but I expected nothing more. It would be a real PR stunt if Super Aguri went and did it properly, broke the outright record and everything. That would be a headline worth publishing, rather than "F1 car drives around the 'ring".
I'm disappointed as well. However, now that BMW have done, who's to say that some other team might give it a try Red Bull are always up for a stunt or two, but their current drivers of Mr 'exciting' Coulthard and Mr 'moaning' Webber are far too boring to do it :P
BMW didn't want Heidfeld to go flat out because of safety etc. And he had to run on extremely hard bridgestone tires. (over 6 sec. slower on a normal track). Also the gearing ratio was adjusted (his topspeed was 275 km/h) and the ride height had to be adjusted, because of the bumps (+4 cm at the front, +8 cm at the rear). And ofcourse, he had to slow down for the cameras. If all those things weren't the case, he would've easily broken the lap record. Anyways, I think it's very cool
I made a much better version. Heidfeld takes 41.16 s where Bell takes 44.80.
Using Advanced mathematical techniques we can now find that Heidfeld could have done a 6:08 which would have beaten Bellof's record of 6:11 by 3 seconds.