Steven Fereday, the owner of Late Model Racecraft LLC (LMR), has set a world record quarter-mile time for Chevrolet C8 Corvettes with a run of 8.835 seconds at 160.19 mph (257.8 km/h).
Fereday set the record in a heavily modified 2020 Corvette that he says he uses as a daily driver. The car is a test mule for the shop’s 1500 HP (1,118 kW/1,521 PS) C8 package, and it’s powered by a twin-turbocharged LT2 long block V8.
The shop says that the one of the vehicle’s main limiting factors was actually the dual-clutch transmission. So it worked with Dodson Motorsports to make no fewer than 38 revisions to the clutch in development of its high-power package.
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The biggest challenge for the shop, though, was the computer. Considered “untunable” by some, the team worked long and hard to create a modifying set up that could both run in the 8s and be a usable road car.
“I’ve been doing this a long time,” said Fereday “and when it comes to C5s, C6s, C7s, C7 Z06s I get a new platform, I’d R&D it for a couple of months… and we would be going nines if not eights setting records.”
Fereday said, though, that this is the hardest LMR has worked on a Corvette to get all of the performance characteristics sorted out.
“This car definitely was the longest and the hardest to get it ironed out to even get it to go an 8 second pass… we go sevens, sixes and fives in these other cars, but to have a car you can’t fully tune with the stock computer to drive like stock, run like stock, and still put up those kind of numbers is super impressive to me,” said Fereday.
In the video below, you can see the car popping its front tires into the air with the force of its acceleration. It also beats the previous record, which was set by FuelTech (which partnered with LMR on this build) at 8.973 seconds, in two runs, proving that the car is reliable as well as fast.
Developed to be sold as a customization package, LMR says that it will now sell owners a tuning kit that offers them selectable power levels between 700 hp (522 kW/710 PS) and 1,500 hp (1,118 kW/1,521 PS).