The 2023 Corvette Z06 70th Anniversary served as the official pace car for this past weekend’s running of the Indianapolis 500, leading the 33-car field to green ahead of the ‘Greatest Spectacle in Racing.’
A lucky YouTuber known as Drive 615 got to ride shotgun in the 2023 Corvette Z06 pace car for a hot lap around the 2.5-mile superspeedway with GM lead development engineer Aaron Link behind the wheel, filming the experience for our enjoyment. The video provides a great real-world look at the Corvette Z06 accelerating, driving at high speed and also revving its exotic-sounding flat-plane crank V8.
As Link explained to Drive 615 during the ride-along, the Corvette Z06 wasn’t engineered with high-speed circle track driving in mind, which makes a hot lap of Indy a bit “spooky,” due to the street-oriented setup. Despite this, Link manages to hit 160 mph down the front straight and dives into Turn 1 at nearly 130 mph, so it seems he wasn’t lacking in confidence.
The downforce on offer from the Z07 Performance Package’s carbon fiber aerodynamic package, especially the large rear wing and front five planes, would have certainly paid dividends in helping to make the car more stable and confidence-inspiring through the high speed, low-banked corners on the daunting superspeedway. The Brembo carbon ceramics brakes also get quite a workout here, especially into Turn 1, as will the Michelin Sport Cup 2 R ZP tires.
As many readers will already know, the 2023 Corvette comes standard with the naturally aspirated 5.5L V8 LT6 engine, which is rated at 670 horsepower and 460 pound-feet of torque, and sends power to the rear wheels via an upgraded eight-speed dual-clutch transmission.
Check out the video embedded below to see Drive 615’s full ride along in the 2023 Corvette Z06.
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Comments
The C8 forum guys are complaining about the high speed acceleration from this video.
It was terrible indeed lol
Now I do understand why the C8z06 was struggling to get away from the 718 on the german autobahn. Facepalm
There are events that you will never forget, that would be one of them..
Seems like we’re seeing more and more C8 Z06s in the media. But we still cannot order one. Does anyone else find that strange – and curious to know what’s going.
I drove an Aston Martin that fast at Romeo (Ford proving grounds). Really not that big a deal.