Detroit, Michigan - The old chestnut that American performance cars are only fast on oval tracks or in a straight line, a quarter-mile at a time, may be about to take a nose-dive.
This is Chevrolet’s GT4.R, which will be competing against cars from BMW, Mercedes-AMG, Porsche and McLaren in the 2017 Pirelli SportsCar Challenge.
The Challenge is a road-race series of 11 rounds, run on 10 race-tracks and one street circuit (St Petersburg, Florida) across North America, including Grand Prix venues as the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas and Laguna Seca in Monterey, California.
The Camaro GT4.R racer is based on the 2018 Camaro ZL 1LE (see the video below to find out more about Chevrolet’s most track-oriented street-legal Camaro yet), and is powered by a race-prepped version of the 6.2-litre LT1 V8 from the Camaro SS, developed and built in the Chevy Racing skunk works at Pontiac, Michigan.
No outputs are given but, given that the standard street LT1 is rated for 339kW at 6000 revs and 617Nm at 4400rpm, they are likely to be more than ‘adequate’.
Drive is fed to the rear wheels via an Xtrac six-speed sequential gearbox with paddle shift and adjustable-on-the-fly traction control, and a limited-slip differential from the same maker. Suspension is by fully-adjustable Ohlins coilovers all round, with six-pot Brembo brakes hauling the GT4.R’s not inconsiderable weight down for the corners.
The race car also gets a deep-chested front bumper with prominent canards at at either end, new skirts, plastic windows and a huge rear wing.
Top GTS-class team Black Dog Racing will give the Camaro GT4.R its racing debut at the Grand Prix of St Petersburg on 12 March, with a two-car entry for Lawson Aschenbach and Tony Gaples.