The 1,064-HP 2026 Chevy Corvette ZR1: 335 Miles, 10 Hours, and the Battle of Los Angeles

For a spell in my teens, I cared deeply about unofficial records for unsanctioned “races.” I suspect this bug regrettably began when I caught a late-night rerun of Jackass’ Gumball 3000 Rally from London to St. Petersburg, Russia, and back in a beater Jaguar. It sent me down a rabbit hole that only grew deeper when I learned about the Cannonball Run and its successors.

Created by automotive journalism legend Brock Yates in the 1970s as a protest against national 55-mph speed limits, the New York City–Los Angeles Cannonball “rally” seemed like an ultimate automotive challenge. Even cooler to my impressionable 2006 brain, a longstanding record had just fallen, thanks to an eccentric enthusiast in an E39 BMW M5 taking 31 hours and 4 minutes to pull it off.

Much closer to home for this Brooklynite teen, that same driver had cut his teeth “lapping” Manhattan in just 27 minutes—a seemingly incomprehensible feat. When I was much younger and dumber, my friends and I talked about besting it. By the time we might’ve financially been able to tackle such an undertaking, self-preservation instincts had long since kicked in.

Still, I never stopped wondering about other unofficial local records. What’s the quickest someone’s gone around Washington, D.C.’s Beltway, Berlin’s Stadtring, or Moscow’s ring road? Then I began thinking more about my adopted hometown, Los Angeles.

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The Challenge

This country’s car culture capital is a weird place to circumnavigate or even to define, to put it mildly. “Los Angeles” as a catch-all name consumes all the air in local and national discourse, but it’s functionally little more than the largest of 88 cities in Los Angeles County—a sprawling Connecticut-sized mass hemmed in by the Pacific Ocean on its heavily populated western and southern flanks, split by mountains and forests across its waist, and topped by high deserts up north. To locals, the “real” L.A. is as subjective as how New Yorkers define “upstate.” (The correct answer is “everything north of The Bronx.”) “L.A.” is made up of beachside bungalows, Hollywood’s strip, and traffic-choked highways. But it’s also winding canyon roads, arrow-straight desert pavement, and famous boulevards. Trying to piece together a lap of its best driving roads in one go became an enticing and enigmatic challenge. But unlike a lap of D.C. or Manhattan, lapping this state-sized county would be as much about endurance as it would speed.

The 2026 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1, then, would be perfect for the task. Building off the MotorTrend-award-winning Corvette Z06—itself designed to win endurance races in GT3.R guise—the new ZR1 represents the pinnacle of gasoline-swilling American performance. Its headline change is behind the driver: the high-revving, flat-plane-crank 5.5-liter V-8 is a beefed-up derivative of the Z06’s, fit with twin turbos that force so much air through the engine that they’re capable of generating 37 pounds of thrust out the exhaust pipes. Total output is 1,064 hp and 828 lb-ft of torque, putting its power down through steamroller-wide Michelins via an eight-speed automatic transaxle. Checking the box for the ZTK pack upgrades the ZR1 with stiffer springs and MagneRide damper refinements, larger carbon-ceramic brakes, and aerodynamic dive planes and spoilers. The latter can help generate up to 1,200 pounds of downforce, though the car needs to be travelling at its top speed of 233 mph to produce that figure, essentially rendering it a fantasy boast. Still, that sort of race car tech trickle-down makes the ZR1 a no-brainer for the big L.A. challenge.

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Illustration: Ryan Lugo

The Route

The Lap of Los Angeles route we pieced together follows L.A. County’s borders. It begins at the Point Fermin Lighthouse in San Pedro—mainland L.A.’s southernmost point—then jaunts east across Long Beach before heading north over the San Gabriel mountains via Angeles Crest Highway. From there it drops into Antelope Valley and across the desert to the county’s northern border. Finally, we head back southwest via canyon roads before an unavoidable stint on highways and surface streets to pick up the famous and fabulously twisty Mullholland Highway to Malibu. The last stretch essentially follows the coast down to the finish line, looping around the Palos Verdes Peninsula again and back to Point Fermin.

To make this 10-hour, 335-mile trip trickier on myself and the Corvette—and easier for our photo team—we opted to run this lap during the day, starting during a late winter sunrise and endeavoring to cross the finish before sunset. What’s an L.A. drive without a little traffic?

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Or fog, as it turned out. The Corvette rumbled up to the starting line at an ungodly hour well before sunrise. The Victorian-era Point Fermin Lighthouse, which by design is supposed to be easy to spot, wasn’t. The fog was so thick, I could see the ZR1’s aero at work as it caught the carbon lip of the frunk’s radiator outlet and worked its way down the car’s wide hips. The lack of forward visibility made navigating San Pedro’s narrow, hilly streets difficult, and it made discerning the difference between dawn and ambient lighting from the harbor to the east tough to judge.

We’re Off and Running

By 6:24 am, the sun peeked over the horizon, and I figured that was good enough. I anxiously pointed the ZR1 north with the goal of hanging a right onto the famous Vincent Thomas Bridge and across Terminal Island into Long Beach before cutting through the city to avoid the Orange County border en route to the 605 freeway.

Things went wrong quickly. An early-morning accident closed the bridge, funneling the ZR1 and the port’s early rush of tractor-trailers onto the 110 and off the intended route. Making matters worse, instead of helping get me back on course, my phone’s navigation app crashed, forcing me to resort to my shoddy memory as I attempted to get back on track. Knowing I needed to return to Terminal Island to pick up my route, I ducked off the freeway into the morning rush of Wilmington and picked my way down Pacific Coast Highway to Henry Ford Avenue.

This street—along with ones like Firestone, Nash, and Studebaker—is a vestige of L.A.’s heyday as an automotive manufacturing hub, leading me past grounds that once churned out Model A’s and a bridge still bearing the Ford family name and back onto Terminal Island. I then made my second mistake.

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With the soupy fog thickening closer to the water, I turned instead of bearing right, sending me down a two lane-road too narrow and busy with truck traffic to safely turn around in the fog. Pissed, I pulled off into a paved railroad siding at the end, reset my sputtering map app, and put the hammer down, hoping to make up time during the long day ahead. But it wasn’t long before I found myself sitting in the morning freeway rush I hoped to avoid with the early start.

The slow going and morning light made it easy to take stock of my surroundings. Modern Corvette interiors have been forgettable at best, but the 2026 redesign coupled with the full carbon build in our ZR1 test car make the Chevy feel reasonably exotic. The traffic also serves as a good reminder of how far cars have come; not long ago, a mid-engine car with only half the ZR1’s horsepower would’ve been miserable in such a scenario. This Corvette, happily, isn’t. In its default Tour setting, throttle response is linear, shifts from the automatic transmission are smooth, and the ride is relatively comfortable. Outward visibility is even decent, thanks to oversized side mirrors and a camera display mounted in the interior rearview one.

Two hours after I set off from San Pedro, I made the first pit stop. What was supposed to be a splash and dash before crossing over the San Gabriel Mountains via the glorious ribbon of Angeles Crest Highway was delayed by gawking enthusiasts at the gas station, but with a full fuel tank and more than 300 turns over the road’s 60-mile span, I knew I could make up time.

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With little traffic save for other sports cars that happily gave way to the Corvette’s maniacal Cheshire Cat maw, I was left to enjoy the ZR1 in its full glory. This car’s figure-eight test result, the best MotorTrend has ever seen, hints at just how eager it is to devour a pristine strip of asphalt. The ZR1’s nose is so quick to turn, its brakes are so responsive, and its chassis is so composed that driving fast is more a mental exercise than a physical one. Are you brave enough to carry that much speed through a corner? Do you trust yourself to brake hard enough? Do you have the concentration to manage front-end traction with your hands and rear grip from your backside? Everything in the Corvette ZR1 happens so quickly that it transcends common sense.

Sensory Sensations

Beyond feeling good, it sounds wild at full chat through the Crest’s tunnels. Although it lacks the chest-thumping roar of the naturally aspirated Z06, the sounds emanating from the ZR1 border on silly. Behind your ears you hear the turbos’ spinning rotors, the whoosh from the anti-lag, the frenetic click-clacks from the injection system, and, topping it all off, the baying exhaust note reverberating off concrete walls, threatening to come back around and envelope the car.

By half past 10 I was well clear of Angeles Crest, topped off with more fuel, and on the north side of Lancaster, quickly approaching the county line.

Conveniently, this is an actual street—helpfully named Avenue A—and it jigs straight west in the right direction. Peppered with intermittent stop signs, it proved a good test for both the ZR1’s LT7 V-8 and revamped performance traction modes. Coupled with the wide Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 R tires, the new launch control system helps make this the most consistent-launching Corvette in recent memory, with jetlike power that builds quickly and progressively, seemingly delivering more as speed increases. This car is so fast that we timed it hitting 60 mph in just 2.5 seconds, while the quarter mile fell in 9.9 seconds at 144.2 mph. These are astonishing numbers for a rear-drive car, especially one powered by an old-fashioned internal combustion engine.

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I was soon on a dogleg back over yet another mountain range into the L.A. basin. San Francisquito Canyon Road has the ignominious distinction of being the site of the Saint Francis Dam disaster, but today it’s a beautiful mountain route that lulls you into a false sense of security with long, wide-open stretches and sweeping views of the valley before surprising you with quick successive switchbacks. As I cleared the canyon and despite the day’s disastrous start, I was now past the halfway point and, going by the sun’s position, had time to spare. I was tired and hungry, and the Corvette’s racing buckets were beginning to strain my backside after six hours in the saddle. I could afford a lunch stop, I reasoned.

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Time Ticks Away

The diner burger and coffee might’ve been a bad gamble in terms of time. Afternoon traffic across the valley to the county’s western reaches was slow, but the reward was worth it. To Angelenos, Mullholland is just another way through the Malibu mountains, but it’s one of the roads I grew up reading about in car magazines, described as playground for car guys—“more than a road … an escape from the city-planned grid and gridlock below,” as we described it nearly 20 years ago. A longtime fixture on the MT test circuit, it was closed for years due to fire damage, but it reopened in the weeks before this drive.

It was much as I remembered, yet nothing like it was. This section of Mulholland rolls with the mountain ridges, rising up through farmland, past multimillion-dollar mansions, through tight hairpins and long straights, and concludes in a glorious stretch that feels like it falls off the mountain as it dumps you onto Pacific Coast Highway along the Malibu coast. It’s the type of road the ZR1 thrives on, giving me one last chance to drive hard before the final slog to the finish.

The scenery had changed dramatically, as much of the old, mature greenery was replaced with burn scars. Down on PCH itself, which bore the brunt of January 2025’s Palisades Fire, the cottages that lined the beachfront were little more than pilings, punctuated by the occasional “Lot For Sale” sign and the precious few houses that survived. It was a sobering scene that pulled me from the task at hand as I surveyed the devastation until Malibu was well behind.

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However, by 3:15 p.m. I began to worry. I was somewhere in the thick of L.A.’s busy west side, sitting in congestion. Sunset would occur at 4:45 pm, and my ETA of 4:20 seemed optimistic. I decided to call an audible and fire up Waze in hopes of beating the impending darkness. Down through the side streets of Santa Monica, Venice, and Mar Vista the Corvette drove, angling to get back around the traffic and onto a hopefully clear 405 freeway to dodge the airport—which I knew was probably a bad gamble. Never have I been more thankful for a nose-lift system; with drainage divots at each intersection, I reached constantly to the center console to raise the car’s front end as I sought to claw back time. Despite the heavy workout, the system remained responsive, shoving the nose skyward reliably each time.

That 405 dice roll was indeed a poor one; I’d put the Corvette in the thick of rush hour. With traffic crawling, I opted to bail and hop back across side streets to PCH, my only hope for survival.

El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, and Redondo Beach passed quickly. So too did the Escalade V and the Nissan Altima whose drivers independently tried to goad me into unleashing all 1,064 horsepower on surface streets. As the clock ticked past 4 p.m., the ZR1 was just entering its final stretch. Palos Verdes Boulevard, which would wrap around its namesake peninsula back into San Pedro, is usually a slog. Between its well-heeled residents, their staff, bored cops, and perpetual construction as the bluff continues its long march into the sea, you can count on plenty to slow you as you make your way past the big-money views.

Across the Line in the Nick of Time

Somehow, after picking my way slowly through the Portuguese Bend—the worst of the rockslide areas—like a Jeep, I entered San Pedro by 4:20. The ZR1’s exhaust trumpeted as we blew past the disappearing guns of Fort MacArthur and back to the Point Fermin Lighthouse. I shut down the Corvette at 4:27 pm, with just 17 minutes to spare.

This 335.8-mile lap around L.A. County took 10 hours, 3 minutes, and 53 seconds, which includes 1 hour and 27 minutes stopped for gas, food, and photography. While I’m reasonably confident the 16-year-old me would’ve laughed at that time, he wouldn’t have at the Chevy.

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The Corvette ZR1 is exquisitely dialed in. Feedback from every input feels considered and thought through, thanks to the single small team that designed its chassis, suspension, braking system, powertrain, and even its bodywork to ensure there are no compromises. This is the first factory Corvette that goes as well as it turns as well as it stops as well as it rides. Its engine grabs all the attention, but the car’s most impressive feature is the balanced ride and handling, especially considering all the horsepower under your right foot. It just sticks and grips, carves deep into corners, and pulls itself out so fast that you barely have time to register what just happened. Speeds that frankly shouldn’t be possible in normal life just are in this Corvette. The entire package responds instantly to every twitch of your right toe or flex of your wrists as you fight g’s to duck the windshield to see where the road goes. Over the course of an incredibly diverse 335 L.A. miles, I continually found more pace through bends—so much so that I’d often catch a glimpse of the speedo and be surprised by the number.

While this lap of L.A. might not be particularly impressive from a time perspective, you’d be hard-pressed to string together so many great roads in one cohesive daytrip anywhere in the world. As for the 2026 Corvette ZR1? It needs no qualifiers. It’s just a damn fine, beyond damn fast car.