Germany’s famed Nürburgring has been the measuring stick for performance cars for decades. The demanding Nordschleife—north loop—is almost 13 miles long and has just about every kind of turn you could imagine to put both car and driver to the test. Manufacturers have pinned their hopes on benchmark lap times in production-spec models, proving that their cars are capable of increasingly impressive feats of speed. It appears that Chevrolet has been putting in some time at the famed track in the ZR1 and the 1250-hp Corvette ZR1X, as they’ve released a teaser video on Instagram.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Corvette (@corvette)
The caption is short, “Fast as green hell.” followed by two hashtags: “Corvette” and “Nürburgring”, leaving no doubt that Chevy has been testing on the famed track. The only questions that remain are which iteration of ZR1 it is, and, critically, the lap time(s).
Ford was the first American manufacturer to record a production car lap under the seven-minute mark with the Mustang GTD on their first try before bad weather rolled in. Ford went back to knock a few seconds off and currently hold a 6:52.072 lap time. Chevrolet hasn’t released a lap time for the rear-wheel-drive ZR1, which makes it tough to gauge how the AWD ZR1X might do with its additional power. It seems that the GTD has a big target on its back, and the Corvette team has the power, grip, and aerodynamics to get well into the six-minute range. Place your bets, Crovette fans, under or over 6:52!
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Word from the previous Corvette track record holding test driver is the will be around 6:30 and could best that.
He would know as he knows the car well.
Mercedes-AMG ONE ($3mil) did a 6:29. Top speed at the ‘ring was 201 mph. My guess is the ZR1 is gonna be 6:32 – 6:34.
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