The Former Engineer Wants to Set the Record Straight
The C7 Corvette is on its way out, and as the car moves into Chevrolet history, Jim Mero thought it best to sit down with Road and Track to discuss the lack of official Nürburgring lap times. The Nürburgring is the benchmark that most sports cars are measured at. Porsche, Ferrari, McLaren, and any other automotive company wanting to show their car’s prowess head to Germany to prove it.
The C7 Corvette is no stranger to the racetrack. Jim Mero and Chevy took the car there often over the course of the C7’s life. The times for those laps were never released by GM. This has led to various conspiracy theories to pop up over the years. It’s not surprising. You would expect the Chevy to be shouting its lap times from the rooftops. The C7 is a true performance machine and it’s the best the Corvette has ever been.
It seems, however, that Mero and the Chevy team struggled to get a good lap in the C7 at the racetrack. In his interview with Road and Track Mero tells the details of each Nürburgring lap attempt. Bad weather, technical errors, recording errors all thwarted the attempts. It seems that Mero and the rest of the Chevy team just couldn’t catch a break. That’s why the official times were never released.
With that said, the fastest Mero got was in the C7 Corvette ZR1. The car did a 7.05 officially (Mero said it should really be 7.04), but Mero says that was on cold tires in less than ideal conditions. He believes it could break the seven-minute mark under the right conditions.
