“I’d never been to Watkins Glen International,” says Bill Wise, a General Motors engineer. “It’s always been one of those bucket-list tracks. It’s got such immense history.” The legendary track, about an hour west of Binghamton in New York state’s southern tier, hosted Formula One grands prix in the 1960s and ‘70s. Today, it’s home to IMSA sports-car endurance racing, NASCAR road races, and all sorts of amateur and semi-professional racing events.

Now you can add one more item to The Glen’s history: A 1:52.6 lap time on the track’s Long Course, a new production-car record, set by Wise in the all-new, 1,064-horsepower Corvette ZR1. “The funny story is, that was my very first run,” says Wise.

By day, Wise is a chassis controls technical lead performance engineer for Chevrolet performance cars. He’s also one of a small handful of development drivers appointed by GM to test every new Corvette model on track, making sure the legendary American sports car lives up to its motorsports heritage – and blows away the competition.

Most days, that means driving a pre-production prototype around a track at sub-record speeds, evaluating the car’s real-world performance and suggesting updates and tweaks to make the final product perfect. “The whole [Corvette] program has been fun,” Wise says, “but it’s always extra enjoyable when you can focus on turning lap times.”

As the Corvette engineering team was finalizing work on the all-new C8 ZR1, they hatched a bold plan to showcase the capabilities of the fastest car ever built by an American auto manufacturer: Five production-car lap records set at legendary racetracks across the U.S., each achieved with a GM engineer at the wheel.

Wise was picked to drive at The Glen. The fact that he’d never turned a lap there before didn’t bother him. He’d learned the layout of the track from watching racing videos and practiced driving the course in a simulator. Still, “a simulation or in-car video never gets the elevation across,” Wise says. “I knew where the lefts and the rights were, but I had no idea that this section was a huge uphill climb, or that part was a drop down into a valley.” Wise spent years competing in autocross, where organizers use traffic cones to sketch out a tiny race course on an empty parking lot. No two autocross courses are alike, so successful drivers have to memorize the day’s layout in a single run.

“I’ve had a lot of experience going to new places and learning them quickly,” Wise says. When Aaron Link, global vehicle performance manager for Chevy performance cars, assigned Wise to The Glen, “he had confidence I'd be able to figure it out in a hurry,” Wise says.

One lap of The Glen’s “Long Course” covers 3.38 miles. The 11-turn track is a diabolical mix of fast sweeping curves and tight, technical switchbacks, all draped over the steep undulating hills of New York State’s Finger Lakes region. Wise is a seasoned racer, and he’s spent countless hours piloting Corvettes at speed, but even he was wowed by the new ZR1. “The first time out, I was gob smacked,” he said. “The thing is just relentless. It’s not just the acceleration, it’s the way it gains speed above 150 mph.”

Turns 2, 3, and 4 at The Glen are known as “the esses” for their sweeping S-shape. "You come up over a hill coming out of the esses,” Wise says. “That last right-hander is flat-out. You’re coming out of a corner doing 150 and you’re like, this doesn’t seem reasonable. It’s shocking how your brain can normalize to the speed.”

Wise ended up setting his record lap almost on a whim. “After practicing throughout the first day, I just wanted to throw in a timed lap to have something in our back pocket,” he says. “It’s always enjoyable to be able to forget the development side and just focus on going fast.” On a development drive, Wise might have to track a dozen different aspects of the car’s performance, thinking through a real-time diagnosis for improvement as he drives. When it’s time for a fast lap, “you just have to focus on driving the car. If you can get yourself mentally prepared, into the zone, it ends up being really enjoyable. It’s definitely an honor to be able to do that.”

So how did a just-for-fun timed lap end up setting the 1:52.6 record?

“The ZR1 is super approachable,” Wise says. “Make no mistake, it’s super-fast, but the car’s got pretty benign handling characteristics. It has a touch of understeer on entry so you can really charge into the corner. It’s got good rotation, but not so much that you have to keep it in the back of your head. Performance Traction Management does a great job of controlling rear tire slip.”

Even with 1,064 horsepower from that twin-turbo V8, “you can lean on the rear tires from mid-corner out, right at the peak of traction, where you don’t have to pull your foot off the pedal. That characteristic approachability makes it really easy to get in the car and get the most out of it.”

As any competitive driver would, Wise is willing to nit-pick his record-setting performance. “I’ve got a pile of excuses that say I could have gone faster,” he says. But the record book doesn’t lie, and with his 1:52.6 lap, Wise now owns the production-car record at The Glen. “It really says something about the car that I can go to a track I’ve never driven before, and in under a day, get the lap time. I think that’s the biggest thing for the customer, showcasing how approachable this car is.”

Wise is proud that the Corvette team was able to set five production-car lap records without hiring a professional racing driver. “It’s hard to articulate just how good the GM driving talent is,” he says. “We may be engineers, but we’re plenty capable of matching pro times in the same vehicle on the same day.”

Of course, an equal share of the credit goes to the Corvette ZR1, which just a few months ago set a 233-mph top speed, becoming the fastest new car on sale for under $1 million. “I think people are going to be floored,” Wise says. “In road cars, I don’t know that you can go faster per dollar than the ZR1.”

The way the schedule worked out, Wise was the first driver to complete his ZR1 lap record attempt. It’s safe to say his performance set the tone for the rest of the team.

“I came home and said, well, I got my job done, now it’s your turn,” he says. “Don’t screw it up!”