It was practically a race car right out of the box.

Once the decision was made to return the Corvette to racing, we had a responsibility to make sure that this new generation of racing Vettes lived up to its historic legacy of dominance. Starting on the sands of Daytona Beach in 1956, the Corvette quickly established a reputation as the car to beat on practically every circuit it raced. LeMans, the Bonneville Salt Flats, and even the drag strips of the NHRA and the IHRA bore witness to legendary performances by Corvette racers. At one point, the car had become so dominant that it was actually banned from competition in 1987.

Diving Right In

Fortunately, the Corvette gave us a lot to work with right from the start. I mean, we already had a car that had been widely hailed as a masterpiece by any number of automobile enthusiasts, including raves from just about every journalist who ever took sight of it. Incredibly, we were able to use many production parts on the C5-R. The production car 3-D CAD surface data was used as the starting point for the race car bodywork, and it uses a production windshield, door handles, taillightsand marker lights. The front and rear chassis cradles are machined to production hydroformed frame as a base for the roll cage. We also used a production power steering pump and steering rack. For the suspension, the upper and lower front control arms, as well as the rear lower control arms, are the same as in the production car. The C% has a Cd of 0.29, qand its long wheel-base and low center of gravity meant we already had a car that stuck to the road like bubblegum to the bottom of a shoe. Since it had very little lift to begin with, we already had a great platform to add even more aerodynamic devices to produce additional down force. Theoretically, at speed, the C5-R could drive upside down on the ceiling of a wind tunnel. An unplanned crash test proved our suspension parts were tough enough to absorb the punishment that comes from racing. Basically, we knew that with the road car we started with, we were well suited to build a very competitive race car.

Making the Racer Roar

When it came to powering our new race car, all we had to do was look under the hood of our production car. The new LS1 engine carries on the strong tradition of Corvette power plants. Of course, it had to be modified to reach the performance standards of racing, but again, our goal was to use as many production parts as possible. Because of this, we used the same analysis tools on the racing engine that we used on the road car. We started with the original 3-D data files and went from there. The engine comes off the production casting line, and its alternator and water pump come right off the shelf. The cylinder heads look  like the production head from the outside, but we rolled the valve angles and redesigned the combustion chamber to match the racing engine’s larger bore. This way, we were able to take the aluminum small block and increase it from its original 345 to an extraordinary 600 horsepower. A big benefit to conducting this development in-house is that it allowed us to work closely with aftermarket suppliers to develop performance parts for the engines. One of the major reasons for all of our work in this area is that it will spur development of additional power plants for Chevrolet for many years to come.

Where to Unleash It?

There are only a handful of elite racing series that suit the C5-R. After 4,000 miles of testing, we decided to enter it in the GT2 category. We chose this series because the cars here are more like road cars and the courses are more like real roads. Also, with competition from manufacturers all over the world, we thought it would be great way to show off the fact that we took a $40,000 production car and turned it into a racing machine capable of competing with vehicles that cost two-to-four times that price. We chose to debut it at the grueling Rolex 24 At Daytona in January.