[VIDEO] Corvette Production Team Seminar at the 2014 12 Hours of Sebring

Corvette’s Chief Engineer Tadge Juechter and Product Manager Harlan Charles were in Sebring last weekend for the 12 hour race and on Friday morning they spoke to the Corvette owners and enthusiasts in the Corvette corral.

But before we heard from the Corvette Team, former Corvette Racing driver and VP at Bondurant Driving School Johnny O’Connell led the crowd in singing Happy Birthday to Tadge who celebrated his birthday on Friday.

Tadge led off the conversation and spoke about the new 2015 Corvette Z06. The reason why it was introduced so early even though there is still a year’s work of testing and refining was that the Z06 was developed in tandam with the new C7.R which made its racing debut at the Daytona 24 Hour race in January.

“The truth is that we have a lot of work to do to finish the work on the street car” said Chief Engineer Juechter and he added “In fact, all this year we’ve been to a couple of warm weather tracks this winter, and we’ll be going additionally this spring, and then we’ll use our own Milford road course all summer to complete the fine tuning and the handling and even some of the aerodynamics. The stuff that we’re showing you on the car is where we think the car’s going to end up, but it will actually change a little bit between now and the end of the year. Perfectly balancing the aerodynamics, everything about the car for both track and street use.”

Harlan took to the microphone and discussed the 2015 Corvette’s Performance Data Recorder. Harlan talked about the how the system works and reiterated that the recorded video is your data to own or share. Harlan also showed off some of the customizations available for the 2014 Corvette Stingray including a factory installed racing strip and the accessory spoiler.

Finally, Harlan reminded us that the Corvette is the North American Car of the Year award and is now up for the World Performance Car which will be awarded in New York City next month. Tadge says not only was the Corvette the most awarded car in 2013, it was the most awarded car ever.

Here’s the video from the Corvette production team from the 12 Hours of Sebring:

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[VIDEO] Early 2014 Corvette Production Stats from Harlan Charles