Forget about price, comfort, features, or any other secondary attribute. The only thing that matters in Car and Driver’s Lightning Lap comparison is the lap time. The premise behind the test is simple: take 20 performance cars and run them all at what is quickly becoming the “Nurburgring of the Americas” – Virginia International Raceway’s 4.1 mile Grand Course – and compare the times primarily with other cars in the same price category.

Of course, an added benefit is seeing how your favorite rides fared against the competition in other price categories. Both the ZL1 and 1LE Camaros were put in the LL2 class for cars priced $30K to $59K along with the new BMW 335i, while the evil Shelby GT500 was placed in LL3 for cars priced $60K to $120K.

So, just how did the ZL1 and 1LE stack up? As you can see in the video above, they did very, very well. The powerful ZL1 lapped VIR in 2.57.5, easily pushing aside the more expensive Porsche 911 S and Mercedes C63 Black Series. However, the biggest news for us is that the ZL1 slammed the Shelby GT500 yet again, beating the snake’s lap time of 3.00.6 by over three full seconds.

The 1LE wasn’t to be out done too badly by its big brother the ZL1, running a best lap of 3.01.5, and besting the BMW 335i Sedan in LL2 by 12 full seconds (…ouch!). The 1LE also took the Porsche Boxter S and the BMW M5 to the wood shed, and was less than one second off the GT500’s lap time. The C&D editors pointed out that in the up-hill S’es of Sector 2, the 1LE came in second place [out of every car tested] and was a only tenth of a second behind the Ferrari 458’s split through the challenging section.

It’s a great time to be a Camaro fan, don’t you think?

Here's how well the ZL1 and 1LE stack up against all the other cars in the test. We'd like to draw your attention to the fact that the 1LE ran less than one second behind the GT500.