How can so many people be so confident of things well before they happen.
I think its very very likely that the new Viper is going to demolish the C6Z. As for Fadi's comment that the C5Z vs SRT-10 is a 'drivers race' - bullshit. The GTS vs the C5Z was somewhat of a drivers race, but with the Viper having the edge. We can debate road courses but all I will say about that is that most magazine drivers are not the best drivers, and they have little time to familiarize themselves with the car, and both the Viper and Z06 are not easy cars to go fast in on a track. Personally I find the Viper to be a bit harder, but thats debatable. Anyway, on the street where we use these cars most, what a car did at Sears Point or Road Atlanta is irrelevant. What *I* care about is straight line speed, looks, and braking since I use those on the street.
On those items, the only one the C5Z beat the Viper in is braking - and by a long shot. In the 1/4 mile, the GTS was a fair bit ahead of the C5Z. There is a guy near me, Rick, who had a black C5Z. He's well known on the Vette forums for squeezing the most out of the cars. I think he was the first to get his car in the 11's stock. Anyway, he was never able to beat my times stock-vs-stock in my GTS. When he ran DR's, yep he beat me but with a lower trap. SRT vs C5Z is not what I call a 'drivers race', unless you take a n00b in the SRT and put a pro in the Z. With equal drivers, the C5 is going to get its ass handed to it.
C6Z vs the SRT, it's clearly the Z's race. The gap is probably the same as the GTS to the C5Z, maybe even closer to the gap between the C5Z and the SRT. The SRT just does not have what it takes to beat the C6Z on a drag strip. On a road course, again don't bother arguing it because the driver skill is a much bigger component and both cars are so close that its hard to pick a clear winner. And since very few of us race stock on road courses, it matters not one bit other than making insecure assholes feel better about stretching to make the car payment they shouldn't have committed to in the first place
On the new Viper, how can some of you dipshits already call this race? Remember when the GTS used to get slammed for it's brakes? Until the SRT, the Viper had terrible brakes. The SRT has unbelievable braking. I would say Team SRT "more" than fixed the problem, agreed? The Viper went from shitty braking to Porsche-911-trouncing braking in one model iteration. They skimped out on the HP though.
In the 08, who is to say Dodge will not address another of the Vipers problem areas - the weight. They did not release the weight #'s which says to me they do not know yet. Presumably either because some parts are not finalized and/or they are trying to get the weight down. They would be doing that either because it's a fat pig and is overweight or because they are working on a lighter curb weight and dont yet know how well they did.
I'll bet on the latter.
DC made the mistake of not-enough-hp with the SRT. Many, me included, went to the Vette camp. But from what we know so far, the Viper looks to be ready to lay a beatdown to the Z. That may change, or it may be a bigger beatdown than people at first thought, but it's going to be awful difficult for the Z to retain the title. Don't forget DC has a defined target in the Z. Does anyone really think they are going to do all this work and release a car that's not definitively faster? I doubt it.