What’s It Like To Race A 650-Horsepower Corvette From 1957?

You’d think that with an open cockpit, racing a 1957 Chevrolet Corvette in 90-degree heat would be far more tolerable than in a closed cockpit car with no air conditioning. I did, too.

But it wasn’t.

It appeared that once upon a time there was some form of heat shield situated between the engine compartment and the driver’s legs, but over the 58-some years since its birth — and thousands of miles on racetracks across America — it had long vanished. All that was left were vague remnants of those former welds. Which meant it was like sitting in a 140-degree V8-powered furnace.

The engine today is a bit bigger than it once was. In 1957, a C1 Corvette pushed around 283 horsepower from its small block V-8. This one boasts nearly 650 horsepower, and came from an old Trans-Am racer.

In a car as light as a stripped 1957 racing Corvette — originally built out of the backdoor by a pair of General Motors’ engineers — 650 horsepower is a lot. And it feels like a lot. Specifically when you arrive at the braking zones.

Beyond the burly motor, most everything else on the car is stock (or at least period correct for a ’57 Corvette). Power steering is absent, the solid rear axle is not absent, and — most importantly — neither are the tiny drum brakes.

I was racing the car in the Indy Legends Pro/Am, a race that headlines that weekend’s Brickyard Invitational at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. In its second year, the Brickyard Invitational draws over 600 vintage race cars for competition — making it one of the most talked-about vintage races in America, organized by the SVRA. Last year I raced with my partner-in-crime Dave Roberts — the CEO of Carlisle Corporations. Our car was a ’69 Camaro Z/28, and we’d planned to use the same one for this year’s event — only it spun a bearing in practice. So we couldn’t.

A brief rain shower before the race meant I had to borrow a child’s umbrella

Instead Dave’s ’57 Corvette, with its drum brakes and 650 horsepower, was granted the Camaro’s place. Its competition would mostly be some 12 years older, and a few of the “period correct” muscle cars were rumored to be sporting carbon ceramic brakes. But, in the words of that bloke that was once on TV, we had POWWWERRRR.