The Corvette Z51 Is Faster Around a Track Than a Cayman GT4

What nonsense is this, you’re wondering. You’ve no doubt read our 2020 Best Driver’s Car results and saw the Porsche Cayman GT4 was 1.7 seconds quicker around WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca with a manual transmission than the Chevrolet Corvette was with a dual-clutch automatic. How did the Chevy make up a deficit like that? Different track, different day.

It was a bitter cold day at Willow Springs International Raceway’s Streets of Willow track, a tight and technical little track that rewards handling capability above all else. We weren’t there to compare the two cars, but we had both a 2021 Porsche Cayman GT4 PDK with the lightning-fast dual-clutch gearbox and MotorTrend‘s long-term 2021 Chevrolet Corvette Z51 test car, and we had hot shoe Randy Pobst, so why not set some hot laps?

No one expected the Corvette to be anywhere close to the Porsche, not after what we saw at Laguna Seca, and especially not with the quicker transmission installed. The Cayman GT4 borrows its name from the GT4 racing class, and it means it. This is a street-legal track car running Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires, the best street-legal tire in the supercar business. The Corvette is an entry-level model with a performance package and inferior Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires. Everyone expected a bloodbath, Randy included.

None of that mattered. At $46,700 cheaper, the Chevy put down the faster lap by two hundredths of a second, 1:19.38 to 1:19.40. That makes this pair the third- and fourth-fastest cars we’ve ever put around Streets of Willow, behind the Lamborghini Huracán Performante and the Nissan GT-R Nismo.

“If the Corvette is faster, I’ll eat my underwear,” Randy said before we gave him the times. “The Porsche has none of the traditional mid-engine characteristics that the Corvette displays in pretty obvious ways. This car is much more planted. The Corvette was all over the place. I had to countersteer more often, quick corrections to catch it here and there. I would have sworn the Porsche was 2 seconds faster.”

What happened, then? Understeer and braking force, according to Randy.

“The Porsche generated a bit of midcorner understeer in the tight corners that I think hurt it,” he said, “especially in the bowl (Turn 8). In the bowl, there’s a tremendous amount of push, and it kept me from being able to commit to the power. Maybe the oversteer of the Corvette was actually helping it in these tight hairpins. The torque certainly is.”

Then there was the braking. Streets of Willow only has two big braking zones, but when I say big, I mean real big. Both come right after a high-speed kink where you really need to settle the car as you shift the weight off the rear end. This is especially important because the track is bumpy as hell, so it wouldn’t take much to get a car out of sorts.

“I could feel the Porsche’s ABS when it came on, and it reduced the braking g,” Randy explained. On the other hand, the Corvette didn’t seem to do that. “It seemed to be solid brake force, no matter how hard I was pushing the pedal.”

Going out for a few laps in each car myself, it was readily apparent what Randy was talking about. The Porsche’s pedal went stiff when the bumpy track caused the ABS to engage, and the car stopped decelerating quite as hard as it had been up to that point. The Corvette, likely with help from its brilliant magnetorheological shock absorbers, didn’t mind the bumps at all and gave the exact same stopping power all the way into ABS.

At sub-Randy speeds, the Porsche’s understeer wasn’t as evident to me, but I got a taste of it in Turn 8 like he described. I definitely felt the Corvette’s lift-throttle and power-on oversteer in the tightest corners, something I’m not used to in C8 Corvettes, which usually have unbreakable rear grip. Randy’s summary of the whole affair, then, didn’t surprise me.

“The Porsche is the easier car to drive fast,” he said, “much easier, especially with the high-speed stability, which the Corvette doesn’t have. The Porsche, a regular guy probably wouldn’t spin that. He would definitely spin the Corvette. With everything off? He would definitely spin it, and it would be big.”

Here’s the catch, though. The Corvette is only faster for one lap. By the second, it had fallen slightly behind the Porsche and fell further behind every lap thereafter. Randy likes to say street tires have one magic lap in them when they’re brand new, and after that, they’re never as quick again. When we’re out here setting hot laps, it matters a lot that he get a perfect lap on the first try, and he usually does. Put these cars against each other at a track day, though, and the Corvette driver is going to watch the Porsche driver slowly gap them the more laps they do.

Randy, for his part, has not yet made good on his promise to eat his underwear.

Read More About Our Long-Term 2021 Chevrolet Corvette Z51:

  • The Corvette’s Arrival

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