In the 104th running of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb – the annual invitational motorsport event held in Colorado Springs, USA and first run in 1916 – it wasn’t a mega dollar, one-off race car that stole the show. Rather it was a production Chevrolet Corvette in the hands of an IndyCar driver that set a new record.

US reports at the time of its release called the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1X a ‘legitimate hypercar’, and while that claim might seem lofty, the numbers on paper certainly back that notion up. Power comes from a twin-turbo 5.5-litre, V8 engine, and a 400-volt electric motor that powers the front wheels. Peak power is a monstrous 932kW and Chevrolet quotes the 0-60mph dash as taking just 1.68 seconds. Capable of covering the quarter mile in 8.675 seconds, the ZR1X is effectively a race car straight off the showroom floor.

And now it’s got a Pikes Peak record to add to its list of achievements. With IndyCar veteran JR Hildebrand behind the wheel, the ZR1X put down a new production car record of 9 minutes, 30.104 seconds on the iconic 20km mountain climb.

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It was initially thought that GM would have a crack at the record last year with the non- hybrid ZR1, but GM’s executive chief engineer for global Corvette and Performance Cars, Tony Roma, explained that the manufacturer wanted to separate the achievements of the ZR1 at the Nurburgring, and the ZR1X at Pikes Peak.

“We talked about running the ZR1 last year,” Roma told US media. “Really, the ZR1X is a better match to the mountain. The electrification, with 186 horsepower, is still there all the way up to the top of the hill. Even though our turbochargers do a really, really good job of compensating, it doesn’t quite make up for that much.”

Given the AWD underpinnings of the ZR1X, it is significantly better suited to the demands of the Pikes Peak course than the RWD ZR1. With so many tight hairpins, Pike Peak rewards the traction afforded by an AWD platform, not to mention the crippling effect that altitude has on internal combustion engines. At the summit, Pikes Peak is 4302 metres above sea level. Its why the outright record is still held by Volkswagen fully-electric ID.R prototype.

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Driver Hildebrand was blown away by the way the Corvette worked on the mountain. “I’ve been really impressed throughout the whole process of running the car, how much we’ve been able to just treat it like a race car,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever driven a car that has this type of setup, this type of system going on, that’s so well integrated.”

There was plenty of strategy taken into the run, derived from testing before the event. For instance, Hildebrand used ‘Endurance’ mode, which maintains battery power – deployed at higher elevation – relying on the huge turbos to speed up the run through the early phase. That same mode also allowed the ZR1X’s regeneration system to feed power back into the relatively small 1.9kWh battery pack.

Once the Corvette reached a certain elevation point, Hildebrand then started using the ‘push to pass’ feature as often as he could, while the suspension was set for the full run in ‘Track’ mode. Hildebrand even told journalists he kept the traction control activated.

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Interestingly though, questions have been asked as to how ‘stock’ the ZR1X really was. The VIN indicates its a pre-production test mule, the interior had been stripped out, a roll cage fitted, fire suppression and kill switches included, and it was running a fuel cell in the boot. Even if the time isn’t ratified as true production car, it does go to show just how formable a production car can be now at the highest level.