About a year ago, Chevrolet took its new C8 Corvette ZR1 to five legendary American racetracks and came home with five records. After congratulating the team on a job well done, we posted some context along with a list of other tracks – including Laguna Seca and Circuit of the Americas – we hoped to see the 1,064-horsepower midengined monster attack next. Having already proven the ZR1’s potency, Chevy declined to pursue any further lap times, and we were left to wonder.
Then, along came Hennessey to partially satisfy our curiosity. The famed Texas tuning shop recently took its blacked-out and stock (for now) ZR1 equipped with the ZTK track package an hour and a half up highway 71 to Austin’s F1 track: the 3.426-mile Circuit of the Americas to see what the mightiest RWD ‘Vette in history could do with company president Alex Roys behind the wheel.
While the answer is a resounding “really well,” it also sheds some light on why the ZR1’s makers didn’t earmark COTA for their initial slew of record runs. The Hennessey attempt yielded an impressive 2:13 lap time – for reference, the $2.1 million McLaren P1 is good for 2:17.51 in Austin. A dang impressive result for the 1/10th priced Chevy, then, but there are a couple of “production cars” in name only that are out of reach even for the major automaker champ.
The first one comes from Hennessey itself, in the 1,800+ HP, $3,000,000 Vennom F5 that registered a 2:10.9 in March of 2024. Next is the single-seat, 1,250 hybrid horsepower Czinger 21C that rings up at $2.361 million and cuts .2 from the F5’s time in August of ’24. Both cars surely deserve an asterisk next to their status as a production vehicle, with F5 production capped at just 99 units and the Czinger’s at 80. So, with the prices and extremely limited numbers associated with the competition, the ZR1 can hold its working-class head high, and maybe the ZR1X and its 21C-esque horsepower figure and AWD can cut into the unobtanium car’s times if given the chance; we’re sure Hennessey is willing to give it a shot at the crown!
