C8 Corvette Z51 Takes on Mustang Shelby GT500: Track Time Tuesday Presented by Yokohama Tire’s ADVAN APEX
C8 and GT500—two fantastic cars, three different kinds of races, one brutal match.
There are three types of people in this world — those who love Corvettes, those who love Mustangs and those like us that just can’t get enough of both of these American-made sports cars. 2020 brought us both a new mid-engine Corvette — the C8 — and a new Mustang Shelby GT500, so you know someone had to put them head-to-head to see how they stack up against one another.
YouTube channel Throttle House did just that, matching a C8 Z51 Corvette with a Mustang Shelby GT500. The latter, without the carbon fiber track package, costs about the same as the Z51. With both cars on a fresh set of matching tires, let’s see who earns that checkered flag at the finish line.
Drag Race
If you’re comparing two cars, the best place to start is always with a quarter-mile drag race. The GT500 has a massive supercharged and intercooled 5.2-liter V8 engine that Ford dubbed “Predator” which cranks out 760 horsepower and has a top speed of 180 mph. The Corvette, on the other hand, is sporting a 6.2-liter V8 in its new mid-engine placement, generating 490 horsepower. That might sound like a huge discrepancy but these two easily stand toe to toe.
One major downside of the GT500 is its abysmal gas mileage. James, behind the wheel of the Mustang, joked:
“The only thing that’s worrying me is that I’ve got half a tank of fuel and I’m not sure if I’m still going to have any left by the time I get to the end of the quarter-mile.”
Starting from a dead stop, the Corvette is the clear winner. The mid-engine placement lowers its center of gravity and gives it a distinct advantage when it comes to transferring that torque to the tires. Thomas‘ C8 took off like a shot and the Mustang never quite managed to catch up.
Roll Race with the C8
Next, Thomas and James ran another quarter mile — this time from a rolling start. This is where things started to even out a little bit.
When you take away the C8’s traction advantage, the GT500 manages to eke out a win — barely. James gets ahead of Thomas’ C8 from the get-go and manages to stay that way for the entire race.
Lap Times
Now things get really fun. Instead of going head-to-head, Thomas drove both vehicles one after the other to et their lap times, starting with the Mustang. It’s a fantastic car to drive, with James remarking that the transmission is so smooth that you can shift in the middle of a corner without even upsetting the balance of the car. It has a lighter suspension in both the front and rear and is an absolute powerhouse on the straightaway. Where it suffers is in the turns, but not by much.
The C8 has two alignment settings — road and track — and on the track setting, your tires are tilted inward by -3 degrees. Under regular driving conditions, this will wear your tires out pretty quickly, but on the track, it provides much better handling. The C8 breezes through corners, easily maintaining a speed that the GT500 lost in the same areas.
The electric differential makes switching between driving and drifting effortless. The only downside of the C8 is that there is almost no feedback from the front tires, so it’s difficult to tell precisely where they are from the steering wheel. That’s why you’ll see Thomas moving the steering wheel more than might be strictly necessary. It’s not a deal-breaker but it’s something that you’ll definitely need to adapt to if you take the C8 to the track.
Who Takes the Crown?
After all those laps, who takes the crown? Unsurprisingly, it’s the C8 Corvette, but not by much. The Mustang’s best lap came in at 1’11’82, while the C8’s best lap was 1’11’53. Both of these domestically built cars are incredibly fast and agile and in spite of the difference in horsepower, can stand toe to toe with each other any day of the week.
