C8 Corvette Crashes Hard on the Drag Strip

New Corvette Stingray appeared to be on a smooth run when the car shot hard into the wall.

Many people who go racing at their local drag strip with a new Chevrolet Corvette may do so because there is less risk of damaging the car compared to road racing. They might be interested in road racing, but that can be much harder on the car. This is especially true of a novice driver. There are more chances of a driving error resulting in a crash, or another driver could run into you.

Drag racing only requires the driver to keep the car straight for 12 seconds or so. There is only one competitor on the track with you and they also just have to go straight. Really, drag racing at the track is the safest way to push your new C8 Corvette to the limit. However, there are crashes on the drag strip and this video from the GyroPyro12 YouTube channel shows a new Stingray hitting the wall hard near half-track.

C8 Corvette Drag Strip Crash

The video below was captured at Lebanon Valley Dragway on September 16, showing a blue C8 Corvette Stingray taking on an Audi SUV. We can hear the LT2 engine roar as the driver uses the launch control system. On green, the Corvette scoots away from the starting line, but it doesn’t come out as hard as you would expect. It is hard to tell whether traction was an issue, but the start looked clean.

Unfortunately, a few hundred feet out, the nose of the Corvette shoots towards the wall. The driver doesn’t appear to hit the brakes as the rear end comes around and the C8 hits the wall very hard.

The cameraman then lowers the camera for a second, but as the video ends, we get a quick look at the Corvette sliding back across the track. It looks like it might have been about to hit the other wall, but we don’t know for sure. In any case, the initial impact has to have done a ton of damage.

Why Did This Happen?

This C8 Corvette crash is like many which occur on the drag strip. It appears as though the car lost traction, causing the back end to dance out a bit. Once the tires got a little grip, they propelled the new Stingray into the wall. This is how many rear-wheel-drive cars get into trouble while drag racing and the result is often the same.

We have to wonder if whatever happened at the starting line didn’t play a role in this crash. When the car first launched, it didn’t come out very hard. With this soft start, there may not have been a ton of power being sent to the ground early in the run. As the driver got further down the track and through a few gears, the LT2 would have reached its peak wheel power output. That peak output broke the tires loose and leading to the crash.

Another possible factor is how some track prepare their surface. Many tracks treat the area close to the starting line with a spray-on substance that makes the surface very sticky. Some tracks apply this spray to more of the track while some only treat the starting line and a short distance out from there. If this is a track that only sprays the area closer to the line, this C8 may have reached its peak output at the wheels around the same time that it hit a slicker portion of the surface. That caused the car to essentially drift nose-first into the wall.

In any case, the damage to this new Corvette Stingray has to be substantial. We hope that the driver came away without injury.

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