C8 Corvette Proves it’s a 10-Second Car from the Factory

If the Corvette’s Performance Timer is accurate, these cars are capable of ten-second passes in the quarter.

Despite being host to some truly muscular V8 powerplants, the Corvette has never been a muscle car per se. Even when big block C2s and early C3s roamed the streets with the likes of Hemi Roadrunners and LS6 Chevelles, Corvettes have always been billed as more “corner carver” than “boulevard bruiser.”

Apparently, the engineers working on the C8 forgot all about that. At some point, they got it in their head that the newest Corvette should be good at everything. In this video from YouTuber Speed Phenom, he takes a C8 to the dragstrip for the first time. He leaves with a pocket full of decent timeslips, but the real shock comes later.

Keep in mind that this is a bog standard, totally stock Corvette. No mods, no trickery, and no drag radials. It’s broken in, sure, but otherwise, it’s exactly the same as any Corvette right off the showroom floor.

Tough Times at the Track

The action went down at Auto Club Famoso Raceway in McFarland, California. These passes took place at night, which means lower ambient temps and therefore cooler, denser air. That also means that hooking up wasn’t as easy, of course, and since Speed Phenom made the mistake of driving through the water box, he made things tougher on himself.

Still, the C8 Corvette’s launch control worked more or less flawlessly and he got some killer timeslips once he stayed out of the water. He started with a very respectable 11.6 second pass, and after some trial and error, things got worse.

Something about Famoso’s track surface just did not agree with the Corvette, and we found ourselves scratching our heads trying to figure out what went wrong. We watched his passes over and over again. Speed Phenom may be young, but we couldn’t find anything wrong with what he was doing. The kid can drive.

Later, on an unprepared surface in an undisclosed location, Speed Phenom sets up his Corvette’s onboard Performance Timer just to see what the car can do. Incredibly, the Corvette roars to a jaw-dropping 10.95 second quarter mile pass.

Hey, it’s just barely in the 10s, but it still counts. We’d like to see what he could do on a well-prepped surface. Just for fun, we’d like to see what he could do with drag radials, too.

One thing’s for sure. The C8 Corvette has way more potential at the strip than any of us thought, and folks are only just beginning to unlock it.

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