It doesn't take long for the conspiracy theories to emerge when an automaker announces a new Nurburgring lap record. Lamborghini came under fire for allegedly faking the Huracan Performante's production car record after critics analysed the on-board lap video, citing inconsistent speedometer displays and cutting footage from different laps. Now Alfa Romeo is facing similar criticism over its recent SUV Nurburgring lap record with the new Stelvio Quadrifoglio.

Alfa Romeo's first ever SUV set an impressive time of seven minutes and 51.7 seconds making it the fastest SUV to ever attack the Green Hell – at least until the new Porsche Cayenne Turbo and Lamborghini Urus come along. Car blog Bridge to the Gantry has posted a detailed breakdown showing some glaring inconsistencies in the video Alfa Romeo published showing the Stelvio QV setting a record time at the Ring. While the video claims to show the Stelvio's run of seven minutes and 51.7 seconds in its entirety, you can see the SUV drive through the same sections of track multiple times.

Case in point: near the start of the video, the Stelvio drives past the same 2 km sign several times. 58 seconds in, the blog suggests that the Stelvio "teleported" four seconds down the road to the bridge at Quiddelbach. Another significant cut is made at the three minute 24 second mark, which shaves another five seconds off the video.

If that wasn't already suspicious, a reader from Jalopnik compared the video to the Porsche 911 GT2 RS's lap and found that the Stelvio blitzed through the same sections of track in half the time. Without these cuts, the Stelvio would have been seven seconds slower than the recorded time, which would put it much closer to the Porsche Cayenne Turbo S' time of seven minutes and 59 seconds. With this time, the Stelvio Quadrifoglio would still be the SUV king of the 'Ring, but the time difference between the Cayenne Turbo S would be much more marginal. Looks like Alfa Romeo needs to hire a new video editor.