I don't like to brag in the general way of things. Well, OK, maybe once in a while, or more often than that. But since I'm going to do it now, there's not much point in being coy. I once got to ride along for hot laps in a Corvette ZR1 at the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving at Firebird Raceway in Phoenix, Arizona. The driver that day was Jim Mero, who at the time held the record for the fastest lap of the Nurburgring in a production automobile.
Well, that was in the fall of 2008 in the just-released ZR1, and now Mero has gone back to the 'Ring and dropped his own record by a full 6 seconds. Even on a track as long as the Nurburgring, that's a huge improvement. Luckily, the good folks at Chevy were along to cut this video of the occasion.
As detailed on video, the 2012 Corvette ZR1 recorded a lap time of 7:19.63, more than six seconds faster than Mero's previous Corvette-best recorded in 2008.
"Testing at the Nurburgring is one of the important methods we have to validate our car in the toughest track conditions." says Tadge Juechter, Corvette vehicle line director and chief engineer.
Measuring 12.9 miles (20.8 km) and including some 154 turns, the Nurburgring's Nordschleife ("north loop") is widely considered the world's most-demanding race course. As was the case at Corvette's last test in 2008, the car driven by Corvette engineer Jim Mero was a full production model with no performance modifications. This test was to validate the car's added performance technology coming to production later this summer for the 2012 model year.