The smash up happened during an race over the weekend at Firebird Motorsports Park in Chandler, Arizona. Weather conditions were clear but cool, with the high temps only reaching 63-degrees on Saturday. Firebird is a prepped tracked, but as one racer said in the comments, “The prep in the left lane sucked. My awd TRX blew the tires off at the launch.”
For this race, the C8 Corvette ZR1 was in that left lane & it would run against a Nissan R35 GTR in the right lane.

This was a roll race as you can see, and both cars accelerated jointly up to the starting line, and then it was go-time And this is where things get screwed up as to how this happened.
Both cars were headed straight down the track, with the R35 getting the lead when the ZR1 suddenly breaks traction and turns left, smashing the wall.

The car then did a slow 360-degree turn, thankfully missing the wall with its rear, and then coming to a stop.
With the temps only being in the 60s as a high and the possibility that it was even cooler when this crash occurred makes us think the tires weren’t sufficiently warmed.
Most ZR1s don’t have the ZTK package due to lack of availability so it’s likely this one was running on the Pilot 4S tires as opposed to the Cup 2Rs that come with ZTK.

Also, compounding, is the lack of a rear wing on this base-aero ZR1 which may have provided additional downforce for traction had it been equipped with the Carbon Fiber aero package.
However, as Brooks from DragTimes showed, removal of the wing does make the car go faster at the drag strip.

So here are some of those videos for you to make your determinations as to what went wrong for this weekend warrior.
The best view comes from a camera mounted on the Nissan GTR in the right lane, and we also have some track-side views to show as well:

Two short videos :

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DTXmga9AIDo/


https://www.instagram.com/p/DTXLLOXlteZ/