Glance at Chevrolet’s media site, and you might think that the Camaro ZL1 is the only sports car the company makes that General Motors considers worthy of running around the Nurburgring Nordschleife. The carmaker has hauled the muscle-car-we-probably-shouldn’t-call-a-muscle-car-anymore to the fabled German race on multiple occasions to lay down the law—first setting a 7:29 lap with a 10 speed automatic-equipped ZL1 in 2016, then whipping the track-focused ZL1 1LE around the ‘Ring in 7:16 earlier this year.
But any gearhead with two brain cells to scrape together knows that whatever lap time the 650-horsepower Camaro ZL1 can lay down at the course…the Corvette Z06 can probably beat it.
After all, the ‘Vette uses the exact same 650-horsepower supercharged 6.2-liter V8 as the ‘Maro, but weighs about 300 pounds less than the 1LE. Sure, the Camaro is newer, and thus has the benefit of a few addition go-fast tech bits…but it’s hard to make up for that missing poundage.
Sadly, GM hasn’t seen fit to set an official ‘Ring lap with the most-potent version of the seventh-generation Corvette. (The company attempted to set one during closed-course testing back in 2014, according to GM Authority, but the car crashed in the middle of the attempt.) But German car magazine Sport Auto recently brought a new Corvette Z06 to the Nurburgring to put the American car through its Green Hell torture test—and found the Chevy able to lay down a 7:13.9 lap on the 12.9-mile course.
Making that more impressive: Sport Auto‘s times are usually more conservative than the manufacturer-set ones. (For example, the magazine only eked a 7:13 lap out of the Porsche 918 Spyder—16 seconds slower than the official Porsche time.) Making it even more impressive: The magazine set that bahnstorming lap with a Z06 packing a stick shift. Which means the Z06 is now the fastest manual transmission-equipped car Sport Auto has tested at the ‘Ring, a fact it proudly commemorated on its cover.
And, as is tradition, the magazine’s intrepid video crew captured the whole run on camera and posted it on YouTube, to prove the lap’s veracity. (Also, presumably, because they knew people would click on it.)
