During the weeks leading up to the official reveal of the 2020 Corvette Stingray in Tustin, California, Corvette Racing’s Oliver Gavin was at the Nurburgring and allegedly set a fast lap time for the new mid-engine C8 Corvette.
When or if we’ll ever learn what that time is remains to be seen.
We mentioned this news brief in this weekend’s “Quick Shifts” and wanted to expand on the story a little further.
The news of the Nurburgring time comes from Corvette Lead Development Engineer Mike Petrucci who confirmed the successful time attack on the 12.9 mile Green Hell to Motor Authority.
According to the report, Corvette Racing’s hot shoe Oliver Gavin was tapped to run the timed lap and that according to Petrucci, it was better than the team expected!
The Corvette Team likes to caution that they don’t go to Germany to set timed laps, but if there is an opportunity, they will try. But that doesn’t mean they will share the time. During the C7 generation, not one of the official Nurburgring times was published and in fact, we only learned about most of them after retired Corvette Ride and Handling Engineer Jim Mero shared them on his Facebook page.
Motor Authority reached out to Chevrolet PR’s Kevin Kelly on when the time will be released. He demurred and noted that “it’s something the team has in its pocket to make news”.
In April, Jim Mero confirmed the 2019 Corvette ZR1 had a time of 7:04 on cold tires and that the team’s segmented time was 6:57. There was no official time for the C7 Corvette Stingray, but according to Mero, it’s segmented time was 7:33 seconds around the Nordschleife.
While each new generation of Corvette has successfully improved its ‘Ring times over its predecessors, we could be looking at a substantial increase for the entry-level mid-engine sports car which, due to the new mid-engine layout, has a substantial increase in weight bias over the rear driveline which improves cornering and acceleration.
Chevrolet has not yet released the official performance specs for the 2020 Corvette Stingray other than to say that runs 0-60 mph in “under three seconds”. During Corvettes at Carlisle in August, an engineer’s flip-book revealed the new Corvette’s quarter-mile time of 11.3 seconds at 121 mph. That would be about a second quicker than the C7 Corvette Stingray
As this is the week that the magazines can ditch the media embargo and publish their own third-party numbers and driving impressions, it would make sense that we should be hearing something about the performance specifications from the Corvette Team sooner rather than later.
Source:
Motor Authority
Related:
As the C8 Corvettes Leave the Nurburgring, Mark Reuss Posts a Group Photo of Chevy’s Engineers
[VIDEO] The C8 Mid-Engine Corvettes on the Road Near the Nurburgring
[PICS] Jim Mero Confirms He Lapped the Nurburgring in 7:04 with the 2019 Corvette ZR1
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If GM isn’t going to share the Nurburgring fast lap time, then I don’t want to hear about the C8 being at the ring.
All for nothing, since GM is going to close all US factories to avoid more labor stikes in the future, and cut labor costs across the board.
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