I have been given the opportunity with Chevrolet to go drive a 2014 Camaro Z/28 out on the racetrack next week. Please let me know if there is anything you would like to know about the car, or questions you would like me to ask the Camaro team while I am at the event. I am very excited for this drive!

 

I just have one question. . .

Can I go too?!?!?!?!?!!?

 

What I want to know is this: is there anything that the engineers wanted to do with this car that would have improved track times, but which was excluded to keep costs down?

 

Jake, I posed this question to Al Oppenheiser, Chief Engineer for Camaro. He said absolutely nothing. Nothing was ever off the table due to cost. The only thing he wished they could have done was take out 3 more kg of weight out of the car to get it in the gas guzzler class 2 instead of 3. They simply just ran out of time.

 

Here are some of my pictures and video from the event this week. What an incredible car the new Z/28 is. It is an absolute beast on the track. Obviously this is where it should live.

 

Here are some more pictures.

 

Here is the GoPro video of 2 laps around the track at Gingerman Raceway. I the second lap I lost it coming around one of the turns and spun the car out and took it easy the rest of that lap. I was in PTM 4. Enjoy!

 

Wow!!

 

Take a walk around the all new 2014 Camaro Z/28.

 

Here is a lap from inside of the Z/28. Special thanks to Mike Abbott for being my cameraman.

 

Lap 2 with a spinout on the track taken from inside the Z/28.

 

Thats an awesome experience, congrats!!

 

Awesome. I love that there was nothing off the table, budget-wise. I wonder, given all the time in the world, just how light they could have made it, and how much it would have cost. Further weight reduction would likely have involved additional use of aluminum, carbon fiber, etc, so it seems reasonable that it would have weighed more.

Chris, when you spun out, did you attempt to counter steer? It seemed like it came around really fast and you might not have been able to react quickly enough.

Also, that high-pitched noise as you pull in to park. Is that the carbon brakes? I've heard that carbon brakes are prone to squeal.

 

I did not attempt to counter steer. I'm an amateur on the track (as you can tell) and just want to see what the car was going to do. From the GoPro video, it looks like it possibly hit a patch of dirt on the road that caused me to spinout.

The high-pitched noise was definitely coming from the brakes. That was the only run I heard that though.