May 8, 2020, John Heinricy drove a Hennessey-prepared C8 Corvette to a top speed of 205.1 mph on the 8.0-mile high-speed oval at the Continental Tire Uvalde Proving Grounds, which is located approximately 80 miles west of San Antonio, Texas.
The team at Hennessey Performance Engineering (HPE) has a long history of testing its cars to over 200 mph. You might remember when the C7 2013 Corvette was introduced. John Hennessey ran their modified Vette with 700 hp to a top speed of 200.6 mph.
The Hennessey team began working on the new mid-engine C8 Corvette as soon as they took delivery in March (2020). But would they be able to break the 200-mph mark?
A noted automotive engineer and racecar driver John Heinricy has also had a long and distinguished career at General Motors. John worked as assistant chief engineer for the Corvette and as Director of the GM Performance Division. He retired from GM in October 2008.
The 15-time SCCA National Champion is the current Chief Engineer of Hennessey’s Venom F5 program.
We learn that “on May 8, 2020, John Heinricy drove a Hennessey-prepared C8 Corvette to a top speed of 205.1 mph, as verified by VBox GPS, making Hennessey’s Vette the first C8 to break the 200-mph barrier.”
The testing was done on the 8.0-mile high-speed oval at the Continental Tire Uvalde Proving Grounds, which is located approximately 80 miles west of San Antonio, Texas.
“We designed a new stainless-steel exhaust system for the C8 that slightly increases power (20 hp), improves sound and is lighter by around 12 pounds,” said company founder and chief horsepower evangelist, John Hennessey. “We’ve been doing some validation testing and thought that a run over 200-mph would be the ultimate test of performance and durability for our new exhaust system. We also installed a Nitrous Oxide system to bump power to around 650 HP. We are very pleased with the results, and we will be releasing our C8 exhaust upgrade in the very near future.”
Vette Vues learned that HPE currently has two C8 Corvettes used to develop a wide variety of high-performance parts and upgrade systems.
Hennessey has already built the world’s first twin-turbo system on a 2020 Corvette. Plans are to offer this to clients very soon along with upgraded wheel & tires, suspension & brake upgrades, carbon fiber body components and more. We’ll keep you posted as details are released.
For more information, please visit the Hennessey website at http://hennesseyperformance.com/ or call 979-885-1300.
