Renault readies its R26.R successor to be revealed on 17th June

It looks like Renault may be revealing a successor to its iconic Megane R26.R later this month, at an event which will simultaneously announce the new car’s lap time around Germany’s barometer of speed – the Nürburgring.

Renaultsport produce the French company’s hottest road cars as well as organising its single-make motorsport championships including Clio Cup and World Series by Renault. The Megane R26.R, which has up until now been the quickest road car produced by the Dieppe-based team, set the hot-hatch lap record of the ‘ring back in 2008, with a time of 8 minutes 16.9 seconds.

Now according to a video released earlier today, the gloves are off and it’s time to show what its successor can do, in the shape of the Megane 250.

The video is choreographed with 3 important scenes to watch out for; firstly a shot where the R26.R leaves the screen as the R250 enters, secondly some moody black and white scenes of the Renaultsport engineers preparing the car for its optimum lap time and thirdly the video finishes with a view of Renault’s new RS Monitor iPhone App, quickly covered up by an engineer to hide the lap-times.

Note: Renaultsport’s development driver, Laurent can be spotted wearing a fresh race suite with ‘R26.R’ stitched into it, which would seem to imply that the R26.R moniker will continue to be used on Renaultsport’s quickest model, rather than something more evolutionary such as R250.R.

According to the Renaultsport website, the team are finalising its setup prior to the reveal (and presumably the lap attempt) – asking us all to save the date of 17th June 2011 in our diaries.

This all accords with recent sightings of a Megane RS 250 lapping the ‘ring, but as yet it’s unclear whether the car’s lap time will be set before the 17th or at the event where it will be revealed.

The Megane R26.R wore it’s track credentials proudly, in the form of a Nürburgring circuit sticker accompanied by the numbers ‘8:17’, so we look forward to seeing what Renaultsport have in mind for the 250.

I wonder whether they’re printing out the new stickers already.