Chilling at the dragway the other night, basking in the ambience, it was a beautiful night: my brother red-lighting every run, my father drilling in a 12.6 @ 112.87 in his 300 SRT, and watching a couple of fellow Greeks run an 8 second mustang.

In rolls something that I have never seen before:

A brand new Nissan GT-R, red in color, rolls into tech. Holy hell, I'm thinking, if only Martin was here! Martin happens to own a C6 Z06, and everyone here knows full well the unspoken rivals that these two have become from endless banter between the biggest automotive newsletters in print.

No need to delve into that.

Anyway, Martin calls Martin (yes, there's two of them) and tells him to ditch work for an hour and bring the Z. He asks why and Martin tells him "Believe me, you won't wanna miss this."

I can't hold back anymore, lets skip through all of the details, how Martin (Z06) asks him to race, the gang of ricers backing up the GT-R, and one lone man with the second most powerful corvette unleashed by the maniacs tooling in an unknown basement somewhere in Michigan standing resolutely beside his big black ride, almost teasing the red slant-six with just the gaze of his eyes.

So, they line up, rather uneventfully, and the entire crowd hushes. All eyes on the line. You hear the GT-R engage the two-step, set to launch at 4500 rpm, and the Z sitting on his stock rear-wheel drive tires.

Lights go off, and the Z is ahead. Slowly gaining ground is the GT-R, the driver thoroughly surprised by the skills of the man behind the wheel of the Corvette, having been drilled off the line by an "American piece of garbage."

The Z audibly chirps third gear, and its all over from there. The GT-R drops back about two cars by the time the lights trip at the end of 440 yards (1/4 mile), the win light illuminated in the Z's lane.

Times:

Z = 12.0 @ 126.
GT-R = 11.8 @ 120.