The 2023 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 is one of the most hyped and talked-about performance cars from the U.S. launched in recent memory so it comes as no surprise that it was the official pace car for the Daytona 500 on Sunday.
The Corvette Z06 tasked with the job of leading the pack at the Daytona 500 has been equipped with the Z07 Performance Package and is finished in our favorite color offered for the car, Elkhart Blue. It makes a particularly bold statement thanks to the black wheels, red brake calipers, and the black racing stripe running over the hood, roof, and rear decklid.
Read: Why The Stradman’s 2023 Corvette Z06 Sale Is Stirring Up Controversy
This isn’t the first time the C8 Corvette Z06 has been used as a pace car for an important race. Last year, a Z06 painted in white with red and black accents was used as the pace car for the Indy 500.
Fortunately, the individual behind the wheel of the Daytona 500 pace car this year managed to keep it away from the walls, something that GM executive Mark Ruess was unable to do while driving a Corvette ZR1 pace car at an IndyCar race in Detroit back in 2018.
Customer deliveries of the new Corvette Z06 kicked off just a few months ago and as we had long expected, the mid-engined car has received plenty of praise and already established itself as a serious supercar that can rival even the very best from Europe.
Key to the car’s appeal is its motorsport-derived 5.5-liter naturally-aspirated flat-plane crank V8 that churns out 670 hp and 460 lb-ft (624 Nm) of torque. This makes it the most powerful naturally-aspirated V8 ever fitted to a production vehicle and is enough to send the car to 60 mph (96 km/h) in 2.8 seconds and through to a 188 mph (302 km/h) top speed. It can also rocket down the quarter-mile in just 10.6 seconds.
