To quote Vanilla Ice, “Will it ever stop? Yo! — I don’t know.” Here’s the skinny. The last time Chevy flew their gang of “engineers” out to Germany (“engineers” being GM speak for facotry race drivers), Jim Mero snapped off a then “production car record” time of 7:26. Das ich fast, jah? Sadly for Chevy, Dodge took their bat guano Viper ACR to the ‘Ring and — whoa Nelly — ran it in 7:22! What were the Bow Tie boys to do? Hang their heads and admit defeat? Nein! There will be a victory! So, out goes slow old Jim Mero (ha ha), in goes Danish hot shoe Jan Magnussen and down goes Viper! Almost. Like the manic Viper, Magnussen and the Blue Devil were able to run the 14-mile, 73 turn course in 7:22. However, they were 0.3 seconds slower. Chevy ZR1: 7:22.4. Crazy as Chinese arithmetic Viper: 7:22.1. D’oh! Can the uberest ‘Vette ever beat its rival? Maybe with John Heinricy at the helm. No really — I’ve driven with him. He’s nuts. In a good way. Now, before you go into a full tizzy digesting all these numbers and what they mean, I’d like to remind you what Jack said: the times, they mean nothing! [Source: Motor Gears via Autoblog]
Posted By: Jonny Lieberman | 4 Comments »
Tags: Chevrolet Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 Chevy Corvette Corvette ZR1 Dodge Viper Dodge Viper ACR Jan Magnussen Jim Mero John Heinricy Nurburgring Viper ACR ZR!
vanilla ice. wow.
Just wait ’till we get a Fox body convertible with a 302…
if that goes down we need to cruise up and down wilshire.
I heard through my brother, who was on the 09 CTS-V initial R&D team and who also spent 5 years working for Jon Moss at the old Chevrolet Race Shop in Arizona that engineers put the same DOT approved Michelin Pilot Sport Cup tires that the ACR used on it’s ring run on the ZR1. and went an un-official 7:18.7 on a single run with zero practice time on the Sport Cups.
I don’t know who the driver was, but it was done around the same time Jan ran his 7:22.4.
Have any of you ever seen the ACR’s Sport Cup tires along side the ZR1’s PS2’s? I can stick my index finger into the center groove of the PS2’s a little past my finger nail.
On the Sport cups my finger nail (which needed trimming at the time) barely fit into any groove on those tires! I would say the ACR tires have at least 3/8’s of the tread shaved from them! The depth of the center groove was around 1/16th of an inch!
With the tires placed next to each other, the PS2’s look like all terrain “mudders” compared to the Sport Cups!
I heard an interview over the loud speaker at Willow Springs 2.5 mile road course with one of the competitors after qualifying. He said he knocked nearly 4 seconds off his best time from two weeks before after switching to the Michelin Sport Cup tires, he didn’t say what was on the car before though, but 4 seconds is a lot from any tire to another!