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The question on Ford CEO Jim Farley, the Mustang GTD team, and countless enthusiasts’ minds is: will Team Chevy go back to the Nurburgring and try to steal back the crown by beating the Ford Mustang GTD Competition’s lap time.
On the latest episode of The Drivecast, Tony Roma, who is now the Executive Chief Engineer for the Chevy Corvette and Performance Cars at General Motors, told The Drive, “I’m not planning on running back and tit-for-tat ‘look at what we can do’ to answer what they did.”
Listen below from the moment Roma addresses whether Team Chevy will go back to the ‘Ring and attempt a new lap record to beat Ford.
Roma explained how what Chevrolet did was different from Ford and every other automaker. “We hadn’t been to the Nurburgring I think in 13 years. Well, we’ve been there, we do development there, but we hadn’t as far as releasing a time in over a decade. And so, honestly, we knew Ford had been there, we planned our trip there before we saw what their lap time was going to be. We were at our last development trip on ZR1 talking to Ken Morris and Mark Reuss and a couple of other senior leaders saying, “You know,” and we kind of came up with this idea of taking our own drivers and doing our own thing, and really making it like a homegrown “look at what we can do” kind of thing, right? Versus what a lot of most other folks do is they hire some Nurburgring specialist and get all the racers out and go crazy and do something kind of what I’ll call different than what we did. So, we came up with that idea on our own to show what we’re capable of, and it was intended to be more than just “look at how fast our cars are,” it’s “look at how capable our whole team is.” Our whole team operates like a race team, and if you saw the video that we did, the Michelin engineers are there, some of those Michelin engineers work on the Michelin race tires, our analysis team was on call and we’d done a bunch of analysis on how to get the most out of the battery pack, and blah blah blah. You know, everything about that activity was intended for look at how cool our cars are and, equally as importantly, look at how cool our team is, right?”
Proud of what his team accomplished, Roma went on to say, “And the lap time was amazing, and at the time it was the fastest American car around the Ring, and look, I think it’s a time we’re super proud of. I mean, just drop the mic, it is an accomplishment to be under seven minutes with our own development drivers.”
A true enthusiast, Roma gave credit to Ford where due by saying, “And anyway, so I love our story, I love what we did, and yeah, I agree with you, Ford’s response was also, as a car fan, kind of epic. Like, ‘Hey yeah, we’ve got this crosstown rivalry thing going on.’”
As to why GM and Roma’s team haven’t gone back already to attack Ford’s latest ‘Ring time the man in charge of the Corvette said, “And yeah, they went back there this year, but by the time they went back there this year, we had already planned on going to Pikes Peak. So our event this year was again showcasing what our car is capable of in a truly American, iconic motorsports event that goes back almost a hundred years. We found pictures of Zora Duntov racing a prototype Corvette up Pikes Peak in the 1950s and stuff like that. So, we just went a different direction this year.”
As for whether Chevy will go back to the ‘Ring, Roma said, “So, I don’t view it as a ‘I have to run back to the Nurburgring and answer what Ford did.’ I’m sorry, I know that disappoints a lot of people, I hear about that at corrals and public events. When we have something that’s worthy and a story that’s worth telling, we’ll do something, but I’m not planning on running back and tit-for-tat ‘look at what we can do’ to answer what they did. We’re going to do something that makes sense for us.”
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As Director of Content and Product, Joel draws on over 15 years of newsroom experience and inability to actually stop working to help ensure The Drive shapes the future of automotive media. He’s also a World Car Award juror.
