Watch a Challenger SRT Hellcat race a Corvette Stingray for braggin' rights

We’re converging on the drag strip, 40 minutes or so away, when I finally get someone there on the phone. They’re not open, despite what it says on their web site. This presents a problem, because I’ve got a 2015 Chevy Corvette Stingray and The Wall Street Journal’s Dan Neil has a 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat—nearly 1,200 horsepower of righteous American thunder, and now no place to use it.

But I have a Plan B, and a short while later we’re at a rural airport, taxiing down the access road and lining up for takeoff. Which is quicker, a Corvette or a Hellcat? I think I probably know, but we’d better do this just make sure.

On paper, it looks like a bloodbath: the Hellcat has 707 horsepower to the Corvette’s mere 460. But horsepower isn’t the only factor at play here. For one thing, the Vette weighs about 1,100 pounds less than the Hellcat. With its rear transaxle — in this car, the new eight-speed automatic — the Vette has a higher percentage of its weight over the rear tires, which are also 10 millimeters wider than the Hellcat’s. And while the Chevy has the frontal area of a Sharpie, the Hellcat is more like a Shar-Pei.

Digest all that, and a betting man might guess that the Vette will actually beat the Hellcat off the line, but that the Hellcat will eventually reel it in. I mean, 247 horsepower is still a pretty major advantage, a whole Honda S2000 or so. I mark off a quarter-mile, per the Vette’s onboard data-logging system, and return to the end of the runway to line up with the towering Dodge.