Supercars Should Fear 2019 Corvette ZR1
The most powerful Corvette in history.
The speedometer of the preproduction 2019 Corvette ZR1 I'm driving is sweeping past the 140 mark on NCM Motorsports Park West's relatively short back straight, its 755-hp supercharged V8 bellowing a straight-pipe sonata. Ahead is Turn 5, which requires an entry at over 100 mph and a pair of steady hands in the moments that follow. I should be pondering the brake zone, turn-in, available grip, the nontrivial crosswind that is shaking the ZR1's big chassis-mounted wing like a frustrated Labrador-pretty much anything but the tax-dodging naturalist from Massachusetts now consuming my back brain.
It must be that Stingray badge. Each C7-generation Corvette sports a distinctive plaque on its center console, just ahead of the shifter. It can be customized with the owner's name or the VIN or a notation that the car was delivered at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky, down the street from NCM. The Z06 plaque reminds drivers of the 650 hp at their disposal; the Corvette Grand Sport's features a chromed plan view of its namesake.
Production ZR1 Corvettes will likewise have a handsome model-specific plaque, but this particular car was intended for testing-what Alex MacDonald, the engineer and driver who serves as Chevrolet's vehicle-performance manager, calls "certification." It's wrapped with camera-confusing camouflage to discourage spy photography. There is no exterior badging. And while the instrument panel has the correct ZR1 logo between the fuel and boost gauges, the center-console plaque proclaims merely that it is a Corvette Stingray. In the opening pages of Walden, Thoreau wrote, "If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes." Surely he would have approved of the way the ZR1 was required to prove its mettle before it could wear the medal.
Source: Jack Baruth, R&T