[VIDEO] Camissa’s Ultimate Drag Race Tests the Corvette ZR1X VS a Super EV for the Title of ‘World’s Quickest Car’

Mar 12, 2026

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[VIDEO] Camissa's Ultimate Drag Race Tests the Corvette ZR1X VS a Super EV for the Title of 'World’s Quickest Car'

When Hagerty foots the bill for what Spike Lee would call a Jason Camissa and Anthony Esposito “Joint,” it’s pretty much guaranteed to be excellent television, but even though this team has permanently fixed its production and entertainment bar in the stratosphere, they easily clear it by sending their most recent effort into orbit.

Since its debut, the all-electric Lucid Air Sapphire has been the Black Pearl of the drag strip, that is, “nigh uncatchable.” The 1,234-horsepower $250,000 luxury sedan from California was engineered by Peter Rawlinson, the same man who brought the revolutionary Tesla Model S into the world. The only difference between his blazing fast four-door creations is that Lucid Air debuted nine model years later, therefore benefiting from all of the technological benefits that nearly a decade of progress entails. At Laguna Seca, that progress amounts to about four seconds in hot lapping vs. even the top-tier Plaid Tesla.

But EVs aren’t really suited for track work; a straight line is where their instant torque and light switch flip to full power have dominated the past decade, even against lighter, more purpose-built cars with traditional ICE powertrains. To wit, the Sapphire is the quickest road-going vehicle Car and Driver has ever tested as of Independence Day, 2025. In their testing, it hit 60 MPH in 1.9 seconds, 80 arrives in just 2.8 seconds, 100 in 3.9, 150 in 8.4, and in just 17.9 seconds, it’ll cross the 200 MPH barrier: insane stuff!

As a part of their Ultimate Drag Race Replay series, Camissa and Co. have tried to take the 5,333-pound Lucid down a notch multiple times with the best that internal combustion has to offer. Attempts with the drag-focused 1,025-horse Dodge Challenger Demon 170 and even the $4,000,000 Bugatti Chiron Pur Sport fell shy.

Now, after years of losing efforts, gas-burners have a new hope in the Corvette ZR1X. Chevrolet’s latest uses the Sapphire and Plaid’s off-the-line party trick against them, combining its own electrification with the original ZR1’s monster 1,064 HP twin-turbo flat-plane crank LT7 V8 for a total output of 1,250 horsepower in a package that’s able to slip under the 4,000-lb. mark.

Can it finally dethrone the long-reigning Lucid Air Sapphire in a straight line? Click play to find out, and because record attempts are a lot more fun when they have context, Jason brought two normal fast cars along for the ride. The first is the 2026 BMW M2 CS, a 523-horse, 3,750 lb. coupe that’s almost C6 Corvette ZR1 levels of quick (According to C&D archives, the mightiest M2 is .1 ahead of an ’09 ZR1 at 60, a lead it holds through 100 before falling behind by a tenth at the quarter pole and fizzling out at 188 while the Blue Devil charges to 205) and the 10Best winning VW Golf R that leverages 328 HP and all-wheel-drive into acceleration stats that are shockingly similar to a C5 Z06 (0-60, 0-100, and ¼ mile = Golf R: 4.1, 10.4, 12.7 @ 109 mph, 2001 C5Z: 4.3, 10.0, 12.7 @ 113). Watching avatars for legendary ‘Vettes of the last two decades so thoroughly destroyed by the X and Sapphire, even with headstarts, is quite the sight to behold. What a time to be alive!

Source
Hagarty /YouTube

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3 COMMENTS

Alex Sommers Mar 12, 2026 At 1:12 pm

In my excitement, I forgot to mention that the ZR1X is equipped with the ZTK Package and its parachute-like rear wing. When they show the onboard view from the Lucid, you can actually see the aero slowing the ‘Vette down as it nears the finish line. Awesome race, but sans-wing would have been even better!
DougR Mar 12, 2026 At 7:45 pm

YES!!!!

If the whole point of this test was to determine, between the ZR1X and the Lucid Sapphire, which is the quickest production car in the quarter mile on a non-prepped surface, then why the heck did they choose the track-focused version of the ZR1X, instead of the quarter mile-focused version????

And if they didn’t have the ability to choose a non-ZTK ZR1X for the purposes of this test, then why didn’t they at least remove this ZTK-equipped ZR1X’s rear wing????

By failing to do either, they failed to answer their own question as to, between the ZR1X and the Lucid Sapphire, which is the quickest production car in the quarter mile on a non-prepped surface (although we now know that it is, in fact, the non-ZTK ZR1X — yeah!!!!).
Alan Druxson Mar 13, 2026 At 11:09 am

Get rid of the wing!