Is the Corvette ZR1 reigniting the lap time wars?
With five new production car lap records set on American tracks, is GM’s 1000bhp hypercar fighter throwing down the gauntlet to European manufacturers?
American performance cars have a habit of punching well above their weight in pure performance terms, but Chevrolet's new Corvette ZR1 takes that notion to a whole new level. The mid-engined monster delivers numbers you'd normally associate with hypercars, at a $173,300 starting price – about what you'd pay for a Porsche 911 GTS with a few options. It’s now demonstrating exactly what lap times those numbers – 1064bhp, 2.3sec to 62mph, 233mph top end and 544kg of downforce flat out – can produce. This is performance to give the established supercar set a good battering, thus doing its C6 Z06 and C6 ZR1 ancestors proud. All we need now, is a Nürburgring time and a new 911 GT2 RS to pit it against.
Do you remember the good old days when it seemed like a host of manufacturers were all vying for the fastest Nürburgring lap time? When the likes of Porsche, Nissan, Dodge, Chevrolet et al traded blows for the production car lap record with the ‘production’ part of the equation being increasingly stretched and massaged for a few tenths here and there? It still goes on of course, but even the fastest times around the Nordschleife are a bit long for an Instagram reel and testing for the average 2025 attention span.
Undeterred by this, the folk at General Motors (GM) have been on a lap time conquest with the monster new ZR1, with five production car lap records tumbling around a selection of America’s premier circuits.
The lap records were set at Watkins Glen, Road America, Road Atlanta and two different circuit configurations of the Virginia International Raceway by four different GM drivers involved with the development of the Corvette ZR1. Between them, the drivers have a combined 65 years of GM Level 6 driving experience and have achieved industry pool certification at the Nürburgring.
Choosing to set records at US circuits does make it difficult to establish just how impressive the ZR1’s performance is when compared to other road cars, but they do look to be very rapid. According to fastestlaps.com the ZR1’s 2:32.3 lap time at Virginia International Raceway (Grand Course) is two and a half seconds faster than a McLaren Senna and nigh on five seconds quicker than a 992 GT3 RS. The Senna was driven by Car and Driver’s executive editor while the GT3 RS driver’s credentials are unrecorded.
Either way, surely GM’s claim that ‘With these figures, no current production car under $1 million rivals Corvette ZR1,’ is confidently substantiated by these times. Perhaps better context comes with comparison to its Z06 GT3 R race-spec sibling, which it only trails by between 4 and 6sec across these circuits.
It should be noted that the car used was a pre-production model so we have no way of knowing whether a fresh off the line example would match these impressive times. Anyone fancy a Nordschleife showdown?
For the record, the lap times and drivers for each track are listed below:
- Watkins Glen Long Course: 1:52.7. Driver: Bill Wise, Lead Performance Engineer, Chassis Controls.
- Road America: 2:08.6. Driver: Brian Wallace, Lead Vehicle Dynamics Engineer.
- Road Atlanta: 1:22.8. Driver: Chris Barber, Lead Development Engineer.
- Virginia International Raceway Full Course: 1:47.7. Driver: Aaron Link, Global Vehicle Performance Manager.
- Virginia International Raceway Grand Course: 2:32.3. Driver: Aaron Link.
Rated at 1064bhp, the V8 in the new Corvette ZR1 is not only the most powerful produced by an American manufacturer, but it allows the new ‘Vette to lay claim to the title of the fastest Corvette Chevrolet has produced with a 233mph top speed. And there’s not a single electric motor in sight, just a pair of sizable turbochargers.
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This colossus of a motor is built upon the 670bhp ‘LT6’ Gemini V8 found in the current Corvette C8 Z06, which isn’t a bad place to start considering it's the most powerful naturally aspirated V8 Chevrolet has produced. It gains a new LT7 nomenclature in the ZR1, such is the extent of the changes.
There are new cylinder heads with unique inlet and exhaust ports and larger CNC machined combustion chambers, the valve timing has been optimised and the lift profile is new to suit the engine’s forced induction allowing for higher exhaust temperatures. The intake system is all new, too.
Those turbochargers are 76mm mono-scroll units integrated in the new exhaust manifold and an intelligent anti-lag system has been developed, too. Lighter pistons unique to the LT7 have been developed along with new con-rods and crank, all of which have been counterbalanced to a far higher level of precision than in the LT6 for optimum running at such high outputs. It runs a 9.7:1 compression ratio.
The results are simply spectacular: 1064bhp arrives at 7000rpm with 828lb ft of torque landing at 6000rpm. The ZR1 has a dry weight of 1665kg in coupe form (a convertible is also available weighing 1705kg). That peak power figure is more than the output of two LS7 engines combined.
All this performance is sent to the rear wheels alone(!) via a modified version of the Corvette’s eight-speed dual-clutch transmission, albeit with refinements made to the final drive ratio.
The result is that the C8 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 is the fastest car you can buy for under £1million by quite some margin, cracking 233mph in a test at ATP Automotive Testing in Papenburg, Germany. At the wheel was not a Le Mans winner, but the kind of person the Corvette C8 ZR1 is aimed at: a company boss. In this case, General Motors President Mark Reuss.
It wasn’t a freak one-off run either, with repeated testing seeing the ZR1 regularly top the 230mph barrier. To set the speed, the ZR1 was put into what GM calls ‘top speed mode’, which adjusts the chassis control systems for high-speed running. It’s not clear if this will be a mode available to ZR1 customers. The 233mph run was achieved by holding the ZR1 in sixth gear – leaving the two ‘highway’ gears untouched – up to the redline.
The ZR1's 2.3sec 0-60mph sprint puts it two tenths ahead of the all-wheel drive E-Ray and three tenths ahead of the naturally-aspirated Z06. To achieve this figure you'll need the ZTK Performance Package, though, with the standard car taking an additional two tenths to hit 60mph from standstill.
Adaptive Magnetic Ride underpins the chassis, with a double wishbone setup using forged upper and cast lower aluminium wishbones at the front and rear. A rear anti-roll bar is fitted, too.
Optional carbonfibre aero ($8495) and ZTK ($1500) packages ramp things up further with stiffer springs and more aggressive aero parts to accompany the ZR1’s standard battle dress of splitters, brake cooling ducts and aero-winglets. The ZTK package also replaces the standard Michelin Pilot Sport 4 S tyre with a Sport Cup 2 R for the staggered 20 and 21-inch, front and rear, wheels. Carbonfibre wheels are an option and reduce unsprung mass by 19kg.
Carbon-ceramic brakes with 400mm front and 390mm rear discs are standard, with six and four-piston calipers front and rear. Naturally, the ZR1 requires some aerodynamic support and all the carbon-flicks, splitters and wings combine to generate over 544kg of downforce at top speed.
The C8 Stingray was the first Corvette to be sold on our shores in right-hand drive form, and the hardcore Z06 was also made available in the UK. If the ZR1 follows suit, it won't quite be the bargain it is in the US – expect to add a hefty chunk on top of the theoretical c£141,000 asking price – but it'll still be a price-to-performance king in the sector.
