Angry 7.2-Liter 1969 Corvette Vintage Racer Dominates
Ride onboard Jody O’Donnell’s angry Corvette as he sets pole position in the “Big-Bore Historic Sports Cars” class at Road Atlanta.
A giant V8, a set of side pipes, and a four-on-the-floor are all you need to make a ruckus, and apparently to get your Corvette on pole for a vintage race at Road Atlanta. This onboard video of Jody O’Donnell’s qualifying session is fantastic, because it shows just how brutally fast this particular vintage racer truly is. It also shows how unpredictable these old cars can be. There’s no ABS, no traction control, and no stability control to save your butt when you get fully sideways under braking for a sharp turn.
The Mitty is an annual vintage racing festival at Road Atlanta, and this year’s iteration of the event hosted Porsche as the featured marque. But this Corvette managed to overshadow the entire paddock with a hellacious roar and a phenomenal lap strung together. Over the course of a lap, O’Donnell uses the ‘Vette’s torque to maximum effect, only needing to shift gears about a dozen times. In some of the slower corners on the circuit, this car manages to run through them in third gear.
CHECK OUT: What Forum Members Are Saying About This Beastly Vintage Racer
It’s worth mentioning that O’Donnell’s one-handed steering wheel technique is a bit on the unorthodox side of the racing spectrum, but it seems to work well enough for him. One of these laps during qualifying was faster than anyone else could muster during the session. Then again, perhaps if he’d had the control of a second hand on the steering wheel, he might not have put the car into the gravel trap at turn 10.
Maybe we’re being too hard on a guy with hundreds of horsepower on tap and just his right foot to modulate. What do you think, is this rad or bad?
