As promised, the General has provided video footage of the ZR1 Corvette and its now legendary 7:26 lap of the ‘Green Hell’. Jim Mero, a GM development engineer is behind the wheel. Jim obviously isn’t your average garen variety cardigan and corduroy wearing engineer.
I never expected to see a Corvette corner and accelerate like the ZR1 does. I never expected the ZR1 to lap the Nurburgring faster than the R35 GT-R. I never expected to see an engineer drive this quickly. This is one video that you don’t want to miss!
Loading ...
Comments
Click here to jump to Add Comment box
How do you get a picture next to your name?
Get a Gravatar. Click here to find out more.
How many engineers do you know? Not many I know are the “cardigan and corduroy wearing” type! Maybe the aero, chemical, and environmental engineers, but not the mechanical, civil or mining ones haha. The engineers who work on building these high-end vehicles know the ins and outs of the car better than anyone else, so I’m a bit surprised you’re so surprised!
A few from my Uni years actually but my cardigan comment was made with tongue firmly in cheek jbot
What really surprised me is the way Mero can drive. It’s one thing to engineer a product and know it inside out - it’s another entirely to be able to punt it around the Ring with that much talent.
Yeah its pretty impressive. He could definitely improve on the lap, but it is still a good run! I knew the cardigan comment was tongue-in-cheek haha. It must be so tempting for those engineers to say “oh we just need to test it for a few laps” haha. They probably spent a lot longer testing than they had to.
I’d say it could very much be improved on. The lap was a little messy to be honest and I’d love to see somone like Walter Rohl steer that car around the ring as Mero seemed a little slow if not all too hesitant around the twisty bits, (might have somthing to do with 800+Nm at the rear of course)but if you look at how he attacked parts of the track like Adenauer Forst the lines looked all wrong and faster ‘cleaner’ lines could have been had.
I’d say if you gave this car to somone that lives and breathes the ‘Green Hell’ like Richard Göransson or the infamous Rohl, even the keenly anticipated V-spec GT-R would need to prove itself.