Camaro ZL1, Corvette 427 Convertible to pace Belle Isle Grand Prix

The new Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 will serve as the pace car for Saturday’s Chevrolet Grand-Am 200 at Belle Isle while a limited edition Chevrolet Corvette 427 Convertible will be the pace car for Sunday’s Chevrolet Indy Grand Prix – with both vehicles doing so in basically showroom-stock form.

“With Corvette and Camaro, Chevrolet has two of the most popular, and most iconic, performance cars in the industry,” said Chris Perry, vice president, Chevrolet Global Marketing. “It will be very exciting to see them leading the field as racing returns to Detroit.”

In addition to announcing that the Camaro ZL1 and Corvette 427 Convertible would serve as pace cars, GM proclaimed that as America’s favorite sports cars – backing up this claim with some fun facts. First, 1 out of 3 performance cars sold in the United States is either a Chevrolet Camaro or Corvette and both of these bowtie-clad sports cars lead their respective segments in sales this year. The Camaro is currently outselling the Ford Mustang by about 13% while the Corvette is beating its next closest competitor (the Porsche 911) by an impressive 39%.

Next, General Motors turns to the virtual world of Xbox360’s Forza Motorsport 4 to look at how popular these two performance cars are with the gaming community. Over 1.3 million players on Forza 4 have driven at least one Chevrolet product with over 107 million miles worth of racing done in Chevy vehicles. There are a wide variety of Camaro and Corvette models in Forza 4 and those vehicles have combined to account for roughly 60% of those 107 million miles. While playing both online and in career mode, Forza gamers have racked up around 38 million miles behind the wheel of Corvettes while Camaro racers have piled up another 25 million miles. The most popular Corvette on the game is the 2009 Corvette C6 ZR1 and the most popular Camaro is the 2012 Camaro SS. As a regular Forza 4 gamer, I can attest that the ZR1 is certainly one of the best cars on the game and I cannot wait to see the new Camaro ZL1 hit the marketplace for FM4 in the future.

Events on Detroit’s Belle Isle began tomorrow with practice for all of the groups that will race this weekend with the first race of the weekend coming Friday at 1:30pm with the Firestone Indy Lights race. The Cadillac V-Series Challenge presented by Metro Detroit Cadillac Dealers starts at 2:45pm Friday and the Chevrolet Grand-Am 200 s scheduled to begin at 5:05pm. The racing kicks off for Sunday with the Cadillac V-Series Challenge at 11:45am and the main event starts at 3:30pm as the IZOD Indy Car series takes to the track for the Chevrolet Indy Grand Prix.