The team at Hennessey Performance Engineering (HPE) has a long history of testing their cars to over 200 mph. When the C7 Corvette was introduced in 2013, John Hennessey drove their modified Vette with 700 hp to a top speed of 200.6 mph – on a newly built Texas toll-road, the Grand Parkway, near Houston.
Fast forward to 2020 and the introduction of the all-new mid-engine C8 Corvette. The Hennessey team quickly began working on the new Corvette as soon as they took delivery in March. But would they be able to give it enough power to break the 200-mph mark? Enter 15-time SCCA National Champion, retired director of the GM Performance Vehicles Division and current chief engineer of Hennessey’s Venom F5 program, John “Heinrocket” Heinricy.
On May 8, Heinricy drove a Hennessey-prepared C8 Corvette to a top speed of 205.1 mph, as verified by VBox GPS, making Hennessey’s Corvette the first C8 to break the 200-mph barrier. Testing was performed on an 8.0-mile high-speed oval at the Continental Tire Proving Grounds in Uvalde, 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 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.”
Check out the video above to see the new C8 break the 200-mph barrier.
