When you start the conversation as a sixth-gen ZL1 Camaro with an LT4 already rated at 650 horsepower and 650 lb-ft of torque, you can bet the expectations will be high once the project is completed. Such is the case with this ZL1 Camaro that has been heavily breathed upon by the performance merchants at Vengeance Racing.

Starting with the highest-performance variant of the sixth-generation Camaro, the Vengeance team began forging their craft to take its performance into the stratosphere. The entire package is summed up best by its title, known as the Vengeance Racing Stage-V Extreme, and infuses the potent pony car with tire-shredding prowess.

More Air = More Power

This simple formula is widely accepted and Chevy put it to good use when it plopped a supercharger atop the 6.2-liter LT4 engine found in the ZL1. One way to get more air from a supercharger is to spin it faster and this Camaro now wears a 9.45-inch lower pulley by DSX Tuning and a 2.30-inch pulley up top by Griptech. An ATI Performance Products balancer keeps the engine shake-free all the way to redline.

To push the power levels even higher, the folks at Vengeance Racing had the supercharger “race ported” by Synergy Motorsports so that it could push even more air than the General ever envisioned. There is also a DSX Tuning billet supercharger cover to replace the factory unit for an even smoother transitional flow into the engine. The LT4 heads have been CNC’d by Vengeance Racing to keep up with the additional airflow and a Nick Williams 103mm throttle body does its best to keep from being the bottleneck in the intake tract. A Roto-Fab cold air intake separates all the oxygen from the dust particles before it goes into the engine and keeps all those freshly-machined surfaces safe. Diverting all that air into the appropriate cylinder at just the right time is done by a Vengeance Racing Stage-II camshaft, backed up by the company’s Gen-V camshaft kit.

You need the right amount of fuel mixed with the air to make serious power safely. Ever since direct injection was introduced, the aftermarket has been making great strides in upgrading the modified LT engines’ fuel systems to provide increased fueling. For this build, the folks at Vengeance Racing turned to the proven products from Lingenfelter Performance Engineering. LPE’s “Big Bore” high-pressure fuel pump provides 10-percent more fuel flow than the factory LT4’s direct-injection pump, which is handy if you’re planning on building big horsepower by utilizing the benefits of higher-octane, high-ethanol content fuels.

An Aeromotive “Triple” in-tank fuel pump supplies the necessary juice on the low side and makes sure the DI pump doesn’t ever starve for fuel. A complete array of Fuel Injector Connection DI injectors were swapped into the build. With a 30-percent increase in flow over the stock LT4 injectors, these new injectors are designed to supply the fuel needs of high horsepower applications without having to resort to auxiliary fuel systems under heavy loads. All these upgraded components were brought into tune by the talented folks at Elite Tuned so that the engine could safely use all the available power and stay within the window of safety.

Proven Performance

When it comes to performance, terms such as “feels like” are best left to the weather report. Enjoying the thrill of all those new-found ponies is one thing, but numbers are the great equalizer for documentation. To that end, this ZL1 has definitely proven itself on both the dyno and the open road.

For comparison purposes, note that a factory ZL1 Camaro carries a 0-60 acceleration time of 3.5 seconds and a ¼-mile time of 11.4 seconds at 127 mph. The rated top speed of a factory ZL1 is a hefty 198 mph, no matter how long of a stretch you give it. At a top-speed event in 2021, this very Camaro while in stock form, topped out at 149 mph while clearing the half-mile.

Conversely, after spending time under the knife, this factory-supercharged Camaro now boasts 822 horsepower on 93 octane fuel and a whopping 936 horsepower when fed Ignite Racing Fuel’s Ignite Red 114 (E90) corn-based power elixir. The additional power gives more than just dyno bragging rights as the car recently went back to the half-mile track during a recent Indy Airstrip Attack event and increased its best speed to date. In the attached video, you can watch the run and observe the steering inputs, indicating that the car can be a handful when opened up, but the rewards make the effort well worth it, topping out at 178 mph as it crosses the line.

This daily-driver Camaro is equally suited for the open road as it is on track during competition.

Quarter-mile runs are scheduled in the future but as of this writing, the folks at Vengeance Racing have not given any numbers. If the Camaro’s already proven performance is any indication, those times should be equally as pleasing, so long as they can get the car to stick to the asphalt. We can only hope to get some in-car video from those runs as well. Stay tuned!