Sitting Where Don Yenko Sat

On the Friday before this past weekend's Ault Park Concours d'Elegance, Adam Boca of NCM Insurance, the classic car insurance agency of the National Corvette Museum, brought an extremely rare 1963 Z06 Corvette out to give winners of a raffle the chance to take a couple of laps.

The raffle was sponsored by American Modern Insurance Group and all of the proceeds went to the United Way.

Even if the car Boca brought was a standard '63 Z06 it would mean that only 199 of them had ever been manufactured. But this was one of six that were delivered, complete with fuel injection four years it was available to the general public, to three different racing teams.

Receiving two of the cars was Roger Pensky's team, two more went to Mickey Thompson's team and the other two were delivered to Grady Davis, president and CEO of Shell Oil to be driven by his company's team.

The car Boca brought up in which the lucky raffle winners could ride was one of the Grady Davis team cars. And not only that, this was a car driven by the legendary Don Yenko.  "You don't often get to drive a car like this," said Boca, adding as he nodded toward the cockpit, "Don Yenko sat here."

As I slid in behind the wheel it almost felt as though I were channeling the legendary driver who also gained fame as the person who tuned the most collectable high performance Camaros.

When you buckle into this Z06 you can feel the rumble of the engine all but begging to be put to good use. The exhaust note is a throaty bellow that screams speed. A 327 cubic inch overhead valve V 8 is what causes the ground to shake around you.

Though the track we were on didn't allow us to really open up the throttle there was a constant sense that the engine was wishing you would. It wanted to hurdle you down a straightaway and curl your through a turn, holding you tight against the seat.

The tendency when driving, especially driving fast is to listen to the sound coming from beneath the hood as you accelerate and to shift when you think it is beginning to whine. As is the case with most performance cars, especially earlier models without all the computerized bells and whistles, it's easy to shift too soon, before the engine really has had a chance to fully stretch out.

Still, it didn't matter that the laps were short and they didn't allow for this car to be exercised to its fullest, the fact that you could take it in such an iconic racer was enough. The spirit of Don Yenko was surely singing along with the revs of that V 8.