Chevrolet wants to make sure everyone knows that the Corvette remains the preeminent American sports car.
The Detroit giant announced on Thursday that the high-performance version of its range-topping C8 model, the ZR1X, a.k.a. “America’s hypercar,” is now the fastest U.S.-made car in Nürburgring history. The car circled the infamous race track in under 6:50 minutes, breaking the previous record by nearly three seconds.
Chevy brought three cars with it to Nürburg, Germany, to tackle the motorsports complex’s north loop, also known as the “Green Hell.” Those C8 models included the high-performance Z06, the even-more-powerful ZR1, and the most extreme of them all, the ZR1X. The Z06 was able to navigate the 12.9-mile track’s 73 turns in 7:11.826 minutes, the “standard” ZR1 in 6:50.783 minutes, and the ZR1X in 6:49.275 minutes. If that wasn’t impressive enough, they were driven by in-house development drivers; the Z06 by vehicle performance manager Aaron Link, the ZR1 by vehicle dynamics engineer Brian Wallace, and the vehicle dynamics engineer Drew Cattell.
The record-setting Chevrolet ZR1X and driver Drew Cattell
Chevrolet
Both the ZR1X and ZR1 broke the previous American production car record. Setting the new mark will be especially satisfying to the brand since it had belonged to its fiercest rival, Ford. Late last year, a seventh-generation Mustang GTD driven by race car driver Dirk Müller lapped the track in 06:52.072. It wouldn’t be much of a surprise if the Blue Oval was already working at trying to figure out a way to get the record back.
It should be noted that while all three C8 models are production models, the Nürburgring puts their lap times in the “Prototype/Pre-Production” category. Neither ZR1 variant is sold in Europe, while the Z06 was a U.S.-spec model.
The C8 Corvette ZR1X circled the track in 6:49.275 minutes
Chevrolet
It’s no surprise to see the ZR1X at the top of the list of American-made Nürburgring list. The highest-performance C8 has the ZR1’s rear-mounted 5.5-liter twin-turbocharged V-8 and a front-axle electric motor. The added help boosts output from a more-than-respectable 1,064 hp to an outlandish 1,250 hp. Thanks to the extra grunt, the variant can accelerate to 60 mph in under two seconds and reach a top speed of 233 mph.
As fast as the ZR1 and ZR1X may be, there are still a ways behind the fastest production models in Nürburgring history. Chevy shows them as coming in at fifth and seventh in the all-time list, which is topped by the Mercedes-AMG One hypercar, which circles the Green Hell in a hard-to-fathom 6:29.090 minutes last year.
Click here for more photos of Chevy’s Nürburgring-conquering C8 Corvettes.
Chevrolet
