The idea of a Corvette with over 1000 hp just hits different. In a Ferrari or a Lamborghini, that number seems appropriate, a natural facet of the exotic-performance sales pitch. Bugatti has been doing four-figure horsepower for 20 years. But in a Corvette, even a mid-engine one, 1064 hp seems kind of crazy. Before I departed for Austin, Texas, and the Circuit of the Americas to drive the ZR1 for the first time, my wife asked whether I was excited. I was, but also, in truth, a little nervous. “It’s a lot of car,” I said with a shrug and what I hoped came off as cool, professional nonchalance.

The Corvette ZR1 is a lot of car, but it’s not crazy. At least not in the foolish sense of the word. It is, in fact, magnificent.

Even after I drove it, the ZR1 is still a little beyond belief. This is a Corvette with a third more power than the Z06, yet it is still nearly as easy to drive as a base Stingray. A large part of that, and giving the people behind the Corvette their due, is because the entire lineup for the eighth-generation Corvette was planned at the start.

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Around 10 years ago, when the project kicked off, a twin-turbo V-8 version was part of the calculations. That means that the Corvette’s chassis, shared among all models unaltered, is slightly overbuilt for the Stingray. It also means that the ZR1 requires no extra bracing or hack-job packaging solutions.

Which is not to say there were no surprises along the way. Early rumors pegged the ZR1’s output at around 800 hp when, in fact, the engine team overdelivered and took it well beyond that. This required a new, stronger construction for the Michelin tires and a redesign for the high-downforce aero package to account for the corresponding increased speed. You can read more about that in Road & Track’s ZR1 deep dive.

The short version is that the LT7 engine is a twin to the LT6 in the Z06 in that they were engineered together, but in the words of Dustin Gardner, assistant propulsion chief engineer, “Everything that benefits from being different on the turbo engine is different.” So there’s an extra scavenge pump to feed the massive turbos, new pistons and connecting rods, both port and direct fuel injection, and plenty more.

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Keeping the engine cool means that the front of the ZR1 (as well as the sides) is sculpted around the needs of a cornucopia of heat exchangers, most notably the radiator and intercooler front and center in the flow-through hood. That race-inspired solution also does wonders for the car’s aerodynamics, at the expense of any front storage. The rear trunk remains intact, although stowing the coupe’s targa roof or any large baggage will be significantly more difficult with the big wing.

In the pits at COTA, the ZR1’s nose job and giant wing distract from the mild inelegance of the C8’s angular contours. Perhaps in a decade or so, the ZR1 will be considered overwrought, like a late Countach. Here and now the impression is functional aggression. One of the garages has on display a nonwing ZR1, the actual car that set the official 233-mph top speed, but as this preview is limited to track driving, the available cars all have the Carbon Fiber Aero package.

This is a stand-alone $8495 option that adds the big wing in the back plus dive planes and a larger rear spoiler in front. There is also the $1500 ZTK package, which requires the Aero package and brings stiffer springs, Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2R tires in place of the standard Pilot Sport 4S rubber, and unique calibration to electronics systems like the magnetorheological dampers and electronic differential.

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And so here I am, helmeted and HANS deviced, awaiting my tour around a 3.4-mile track designed for Formula 1 levels of speed, first in a lead-follow format and then unaccompanied.

I’m not going in blind, having run familiarization laps in a Stingray the day before. But straight out of the pits and up COTA’s giant hill, it’s clear that the ZR1 is an entirely different machine. It sounds different, the flat-plane engine shouting in an alto rasp compared with the muted rumble of the Stingray. But mostly it’s just much, much faster. Even on the first round, with the Pilot Sport 4S underneath, there’s so much grip that I audibly grunt from the effort to keep my torso stable toward the end of the brief session (note to self: I really need more core exercises).

COTA is an ideal place to showcase the ZR1, large enough to demonstrate the car’s power and with a variety of turns to test the balance and dynamics. The track itself is also huge, with plenty of space for course correction inside the curbs and even more paved runoff area if things go horribly wrong. I needed only some of the former and none of the latter, as it turns out my prior uneasiness was unwarranted.

This much speed makes it easy to get greedy in places like the Turn 11 hairpin, where I attempt to brake late on one lap and then double down on this mistake with impatience, getting back on the throttle too early. The Performance Traction Management system, set in Sport (the highest setting with stability control still active) at the behest of Chevrolet, lightly tamps down on the throttle an instant before my own instinctual correction. PTM is welcome safety net with plenty of slack, but the ZR1 doesn’t show any signs of snap oversteer that would dissuade me from exploring the software’s more permissive modes.

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The ZR1 is a friendly kind of monster, approachable and predictable. The peak 828 lb-ft of torque comes at 6000 rpm, but the dyno curve is nearly a flat line above the 800 mark from just 3000 rpm. That, along with some extra tricks with the turbo wastegates when aggressive driving is detected, means that there’s virtually no lag or sudden power surge during track driving. The accelerator is more like turning a tap, if that tap flows like a fire hydrant. Over 100 mph, this Corvette will still pull half a g of longitudinal acceleration.

Massive horsepower can mask a lot of things, including weight, but the ZR1 is relatively light considering the turbo hardware. At just over 3800 pounds, it’s about 165 pounds more than a track-optioned Z06. McLaren’s 750S is more than 600 pounds lighter. In the Lamborghini Revuelto, Road & Track’s 2025 Performance Car of the Year and an official member of the 1000-hp club, electric motors and a battery raise the curb weight to 4290 pounds. Coincidentally, both cars push 4.3 pounds for each horsepower. Each pony in the Corvette has to shove only 3.6 pounds.

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The ZR1 matches its predictable power delivery with a neutral cornering attitude that’s easily tuned with both gas and brakes, enabling sharper entry and midcorner corrections with a brush of either pedal, no steering input required. It’s a handling virtue inherent to the mid-engine configuration, but I didn’t expect the Corvette’s responses to be capable of this level of subtlety. The brakes, ceramic discs identical in size to the Z06’s but with new, long strands of carbon fiber with superior heat rejection, are equally competent.

Around COTA’s corners, especially the endless right-hand combo of Turns 16, 17, and 18, the reassuring characteristics of the ZR1 do only half the job. The rest is up to convincing myself to keep pushing—that unless the tires are starting to slide, the car will go faster. Sitting in the pits, I take a quick look at my laps in the onboard performance data recorder to see that, sure enough, there is more speed available in the corners. It’s less about overcoming fear than about simply recalibrating what a road car can do.

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It’s also about seats. With the ZR1, Chevrolet has built a car that can deliver lateral loadings to defeat all its available buckets. Every member of the engineering team seems to be aware of the issue, which one can only hope is a sign that a more heavily bolstered option is on the way.

A need for better lateral support in the cockpit is immediately obvious in my second session, in a ZTK car shod with the Cup 2R tires. The difference is palpable on Turn 2 of my out lap. This is the tire the ZR1 was made for, able to hold on closer to the limits of the chassis but losing none of the feel or predictability. Normally, I’m an advocate for less grip, as sliding around is its own kind of entertainment, and R-spec tires seem like track-focused cheats impractical for daily driving. Here, though, the ZR1 corners so easily that it feels like a shame to have anything except maximum grip available.

Of course, we’ll come back to that estimation once we get a crack at the ZR1 on public roads, where the limits of safety and sanity come into play before the Michelins do. This 1064 hp might be easy to access, but it’s still unusably fast in nearly any scenario under a speed limit.

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Still, the base ZR1’s springs are softer than those in the Z06, which bodes well for daily-driving civility. And in general terms, the Corvette is easy to enjoy. The giant wing makes rearward visibility even more useless, but the rearview camera integrated into the mirror is placed in the decklid for an unobstructed view (nonwing cars view from the top of the rear glass, at an angle closer to the actual mirror).

And for those who never loved the line of buttons on top of the border between driver and passenger, the 2026 model year will feature a new interior layout and wider infotainment screen. This, of course, also means, that some Corvette nerds will see the 2025 ZR1 as rarer and more unique.

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Me? I’d wait. Early demand and inevitable dealer markups will make the 2025 ZR1 hard to acquire anyway. And even with inflated stickers, the ZR1 continues the Corvette tradition as a giant killer. Consider that the base price of $178,195 is just $6145 higher than a Porsche 911 GTS, a car with half the horsepower and less standard spec.

You can lather up a ZR1 with options, even the $13,995 carbon-fiber wheels, and it’s still priced comparable to a Porsche 911 GT3—while having more power than the Revuelto. Exotic supercars can cost multiples of the Corvette’s price without adding anything obvious beyond the value attached to their brands. Based on my first experience on track, it looks like the ZR1 can stand toe to toe with any of those alternatives, delivering its own version of world-class performance.