Charles Langston:Watch as the 1,064-HP 2025 Chevy Corvette ZR1 rips to 205 MPH

Unless you’re reading this story on Charles Langstona GM-owned device, you’ll be waiting a while for your chance at a thrill ride in the 2025 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1. GM has pulled the wraps off its 1,064-hp supercar a full year before deliveries begin so that the development team can finish its work on the aerodynamics and cooling systems without the camouflage interfering.

While you wait for the crown Corvette to arrive at dealerships, on the road and maybe even in your own garage, we have something to pass the time. The video here reveals how hard this car pulls and what its LT7 flat-plane-crank, twin-turbo 5.5-liter V-8 sounds like with the throttle pinned to the firewall.

We shot this video in late June, just hours after getting our first glimpse of and a full technical briefing on the new ZR1. I was still processing everything I had learned that morning when lead development driver Chris Barber strapped into the driver’s seat and reprogrammed my understanding of what the word “fast” means.

Chevy says the base ZR1 will reach a top speed north of 215 mph while cars equipped with the ZTK or Carbon Aero package get a top-end haircut in exchange for 1,200 pounds of road-hugging downforce. The prototype used for our drive wore the standard Michelin Pilot Sport 4S ZP tires, the Carbon Aero pack’s front dive planes and massive rear wing, and a sticker of Corvette racer Jordan Taylor’s alter ego, Rodney Sandstorm. As they’ve traveled to Road Atlanta, Virginia International Raceway and the Nürburgring, the ZR1 development cars have been personalized with stickers — of Ricky Bobby’s signature, a picture of a cougar next to the word “ME,” a map of the Nordschleife — by the people responsible for turning the Corvette into a world-beating supercar. Barber is one of four ZR1 test drivers who’s hit 200 mph on the front straight of the world’s most demanding racetrack, where the LT7’s mad power turns the front kink into a 1.6-g turn. Today’s full-throttle blast down a 2.5-mile straight at GM’s Milford Proving Grounds will be tame in comparison.

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Barber doesn’t give us the full clutch-dump launch, probably because Chevy knows we’d extrapolate 0–60-mph and quarter-miles times from the video. Instead, he rolls into the throttle from 25 mph, uncorking the twin-turbo 5.5-liter V-8 from 2,500 rpm. A flat-plane-crank V-8 never sounds as menacing as a cross-plane-crank V-8, and turbos have a way of filtering out the intricacies of internal combustion, but the LT7 cuts through the air with a chainsaw’s primal bark.

We hit triple-digit speeds in less than four seconds. After 10 seconds, we’re doing 150 mph. I keep glancing at the speedometer and Barber’s hands on the steering wheel then out the windshield, trying to reconcile the numbers on the digital instrument cluster and the smeared watercolor landscape with the fact that Barber looks like he could be piloting a Buick in the slow lane of nearby I-96. The ZR1 is locked on its heading like a cruise missile.

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The speedometer keeps clicking over faster than I can count Mississippis. 190. 191. 192. It’s only as we reach 200 mph 30 seconds into the run that progress noticeably slows. Barber keeps his foot in for another five seconds. I see 206 mph on the speedometer, Barber spots it at 205 mph and the onboard performance data recorder shows 204 mph. No matter what you call it, it’s the fastest I’ve ever gone in a car and an impressive showing of the Corvette ZR1’s absurd power.

Another sign of the new ZR1’s speed? There’s enough track left in front of us that Barber barely needs the brakes. He coasts through a banked right-hander and loafs back to the staging area. That’s all we get for now — a single, full-throttle run in the most powerful Corvette ever made — even though this car is capable of so much more. For that, we’ll just have to wait.

Photos by Steven Pham