2023 C8 Corvette Z06 Races Porsche 992 GT3, Ducati V4 SP2, and Audi R8 V10 — Cammisa Drag Race

Turbochargers are for people who can't build engines. Don't get mad at me, that wasn't my quote, that came from Keith Duckworth, who's the Wirth in Cosworth, and he wasn't wrong. So today we brought a bunch of machines from manufacturers who can build engines. A naturally aspirated six-cylinder, a naturally aspirated V8, a naturally aspirated V10, and a four-cylinder. Excuse me, sir, the rules of this race are very simple. Naturally aspirated in rear drive, but the engine has to be behind the driver. Fine. We gotta race! It's four versus six versus eight versus ten. What about the 12 and 16 cylinders? Really? Diva. First things first, the C8 Corvette Z06 is an instant classic, because it's the type of car that can only exist when there's a real enthusiast in charge of a car company. For maximum ROI, GM could have just slapped a supercharger on the Stingray's pushrod V8 like they've done in the past. But they didn't. For only the second time in history, the Corvette crew has made an all-new quad cam V8 for use solely in the Corvette. And this time it has a flat plane crankshaft so that the folks in Maranello hear the message loud and clear. This is an American Ferrari. And this is a German Lamborghini. The Audi R8 V10 performance is, of course, a near-identical twin to the Lamborghini Huracan, and its V10 can rev to 8,700, 100 RPM more than the Z06's V8. And yet the Porsche 911 GT3's 4-liter flat-six revs even higher, to an even 9,000 RPM. This is the naturally aspirated benchmark. The engine to which all other NA motors answer to. Enough of that. It's time to race. So I told you this thing was an instant legend. The Z06 jumps off the line like a rear-engined Porsche 911. And I can explain that by pointing out that it has the same static weight distribution as a GT3. It doesn't, however, have the same weight. The Corvette weighs 450 pounds more than the GT3, but it makes up for it with 170 more horsepower. Best power-to-weight ratio of the group, plus a great launch, and well, we have a winner. To answer Randy's question from before, there are no 12- or 16-cylinder, naturally aspirated, rear-wheel drive, rear- or mid-engine cars. All of them use at least all-wheel drive so they can cheat off the line. The benchmark there is the Lamborghini Aventador SV. And even despite its all-wheel drive and big V12, it would have tied the Z06. March your ass down to a Bugatti dealer and buy yourself a used Veyron and cheat with all-wheel drive and four more cylinders and four turbos, and it still would have only been four-tenths of a second in front of that Z06. Four-tenths of a second behind the Z06 is the 911 GT3. And before you yell at me, no, a GT3 RS wouldn't have been any quicker here, because the RS's downforce comes at the expense of aerodynamic drag. And that GT3 has nothing to be ashamed about. Think about it. It's just a little four-liter. It's a four-liter all-motor sports car that breaks into the tens. And it does that every single time. No complicated launch control procedure. You just flat-foot it, lift your foot off the brake, and it delivers every single time. OK, so we haven't been exactly fair to Audi, because that's a Spider, and the Spider weighs 275 pounds more than the Coupe. But what we really should have had is the Coupe Performance GT. Fortunately, Audi couldn't get us a Coupe in time, which has sticky tires, the full-fat 602 horsepower version of that engine, and, if my math is correct, would have tied the GT3. But still, low 11s on a naturally aspirated car is crazy town. That is not slow. But that is just nuts. This whole thing just shows how much the Z06 punches a full class above its weight. Just 10 years ago, you would have had to have been high to imagine a 670 horsepower all-motor American V8. And 10 years ago, weed was legal. The only quote-unquote bummer here is that launch control plus automatic transmissions make these incredible numbers so easy to achieve. The race gets a whole lot more interesting, once again, if you get rid of two wheels. And then if you replace SCCA Hall of Fame race car driver Randy Popes, watch out with this thing. This is Josh Heron, and he just won the Moto America Supersport Championship on a Ducati. You're gonna need this. All right, all right, all right. All right. But I'm driving that. Oh, diva. To the motorcycle uninitiated, like me, Lamborghini now owns Ducati. Appropriate because Ducati is, well, the Lamborghini of motorcycles. And this is the absolute top spec Ducati. The Panigale V4 SP2 is a $40,000 monster. Under its hood is a desmodromic valve, odd firing, 1,103 cc, 16 valve, 15,500 rpm V4, making 210 horsepower. It has carbon fiber wheels, traction control, wheelie control, and launch control. And even with a rider on it, each of those 210 Ducati horses has to move only two and three quarter pounds, exactly half as many as each of the Z06's 670 horses. Then again, motorcycles aren't known for their launches, even with championship riders on them. So, three, two, one, go. Oh, if you thought the Corvette launched hard, well, then you've never seen a pro rider on a Ducati. On his timed run, Josh used precisely none of the Ducati's electronic aids and then slaughtered the times that even professional bike testers have achieved with the SP2. We were expecting the bike to eek the slightest advantage over the Corvette, but with Josh riding it, Ducati pulled a mid nine and left the Z06 for dead. Well, okay. So, with a perfect launch in ideal conditions with an actual championship winning rider, the super bike of the moment can beat the super car of the moment. But it must be said that without that actual championship winning rider, that race would have looked very, very different. Probably a lot more ambulance-y too. But this is the point. Of things with four wheels, the Z06 is the mid-engined, naturally aspirated, rear-wheel drive champion. And the lesson for me is the next time I race a motorcycle, I had better bring a much quicker car. Maybe I will.