That has to be the worst professional driver ever. How many times did he mis-shift and bounce the car of the limiter? Also, the car had to be re-geared because he was in 6th on the long straight and he hit the rev limiter way before the end of it. I still think the ZR1 is King of the Ring!
I pulled up both videos and started them at the same point where they enter the straight. The Vette shifts from 5th at 6350 doing 175 to 6th which drops the revs to 5200 and then the mph drops to 174. When the Vette is at about 170 is when the Viper bounces off the limiter in 6th even though the viper has a taller .63 6th to the Corvettes .67. They definitely geared the Viper. They even said in the Motor Trend article that if they had more time to shorten the gearing they would have gone quicker.
http://www.motortrend.com/features/p...ord/index.html
I think if they would have pulled more gear out the driver would have just bounced off the limiter longer before each corner because he clearly didn't want to upshift.
If they were running the stock size 335/30/19 then they were most likely running a 4.56 gear because at 170 the engine would be turning 6100 and it looks like the limiter is at 6200.