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2018 Corvette ZR1 Tuning Up on the Nürburgring

Once again there was a flash of black and white at the German race course. And once again, there were photographers to make sure photos of the thing were leaked onto the internet.

This time, there seems to be a Corvette underneath the monochrome pattern that attempts to conceal the contours and curves of the car. This Corvette however, seems to boast a little more muscle than the previous. Could this be the ZR1? The video below shows the same mule testing at Laguna Seca earlier this year.

At the front there are large air intakes, one each side for cooling the brakes, two in the middle for supplying the radiators with cool air. On following the movement of air over the bonnet, there seem to be larger extraction vents than the previous model too.

Now to address the elephant in the room – the substantial wing, placed not so politely on the rear or the car. Reminiscent of the wing on the Dodge Viper ACR, I can only guess is Chevrolet’s answer to Dodge’s track weapon and may well be picking up the pieces left in the Viper’s absence.

Chevrolet has given no clues as to what could be hiding under the engorged bonnet and body panels, but if it were to follow in the footsteps of the ACR we could be looking at a Nürburgring time close to 7:12. Getting a faster time than that would breach the top ten fastest production cars ever to run the Ring. They are as follows:

  1. Radical SR8LM – 6:48.00
  2. Lamborghini Huracan Performante – 6:52:01
  3. Radical SR8 – 6:56.08
  4. Porsche 918 Spider – 6:57.00
  5. Lamborghini Aventador LP 750-4 Superveloce – 6:59.73
  6. NextEV Nio EP9 – 7:05.12
  7. Nissan GTR Nismo – 7:08.68
  8. Mercedes-AMG GT-R – 7:10.92
  9. Gumper Apollo Speed – 7:11.57
  10. Dodge Viper SRT-10 ACR – 7:12.13

I’d love to see the Corvette live up to its history, especially as the last ZL1 sits in 16th fastest place around the Ring with a time of 7:19.63.

This isn’t the first time the new Corvette has been seen on track. Hopefully it won’t be too much longer and we’ll be seeing it on the road, too.

Alex Harrington

Alex started racing at a young age so certainly knows his way around a car and a track. He can just about put a sentence together too, which helps. He has a great interest in the latest models, but would throw all of his money at a rusty old French classic and a 300ZX. Contact: [email protected]

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One Comment

  1. We already know the current Z06 is faster than the NISMO GT-R, see literally every single track both of them have been timed on. So I think it’s 100% guaranteed the ZR1 will be faster than that. And with that big wing, it looks like the ZR1 is going all ACR-ish, which means it will probably be substantially faster than the Z06, which means it may be going for a sub-7 minute time.

    The Porsche 918 has a sub-7 minute time, and if you look at times on other tracks, the Z06 is always very, very close to the 918’s times, and in one case (at VIR), the Z06 was actually faster than the 918 by 2 seconds per lap. So it’s not even a stretch to assume the ZR1 is going to be hitting sub-7 minute times at the ring.

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