Did A 2020 Corvette C8 Crash At Virginia Racetrack? GM Says I Don’t Think So

A rumor surfaced today claiming that a prototype of the 2020 Chevrolet Corvette C8  may have been involved in some sort of incident at the Virginia International Raceway last week. We asked GM, and received a non-denial denial.

But let’s start from the beginning. As noticed by Corvetteblogger, a member of the Corvette Forum says he received an e-mail on Thursday stating entry into the paddock would be delayed until 7:30 pm that evening. This is later than usual and the track reportedly apologized by saying something to the effect of “their hands were tied with a private ‘high security’ track rental.”

The member, Tool Hoarder, goes on to say he was instructing at the track last weekend and talk in the paddock was that Chevrolet had rented the track to test the twin-turbo version of the Corvette C8. One of these prototypes reportedly crashed and the clean up process was what caused the delayed on Thursday.

The user later updated the post with photos of camouflaged panels which were reportedly recovered at VIR by someone else. They don’t appear to have any visible markings on them, but the camouflage pattern is similar to the one used on Corvette prototypes.

While forum posts should always been taken with a grain of salt, VIR’s track calendar shows the course was rented out on two different occasions last week for private testing. The first session occurred on Monday, while another session was scheduled for Tuesday to Thursday. This confirms the track was being rented out, but it’s not entirely clear by whom.

What does GM say?

We reached out to both GM and VIR for additional information. We haven’t heard back from VIR yet, but a GM spokesperson say “my gut tells me no accidents happened at VIR last week.”  That’s not exactly a denial, but it’s certainly not a confirmation.

If the C8 was indeed involved in an accident, it would be the latest in a string of rumored setbacks. Previous reports have suggested the car’s new electrical architecture is causing issues and the model’s aluminum spaceframe is suffering “structural distortion” in the high-performance variant. That model is rumored to have between 900 hp (671 kW / 912 PS) and 1,000 hp (746 kW / 1014 PS).