Before the Corvette Grand Sport racers shocked the sports-car world in 1963, Dave MacDonald drove a strange and lightweight Corvette-based race car known as the MacDonald-Simpson 1961 Corvette Special. With a dramatically shortened wheelbase and purpose-built racing body, the car blurred the line between production Corvette and prototype racer—making it one of the most intriguing early Corvette competition machines.
Whatever became of the first, independent, purpose-built, 1,750-pound Corvette racer? Unless you are familiar with the early days of Corvette racing, the name Dave...
The Corvette Racing Team has proven that the Corvette is more than a match for any sports car on the planet. But in the early days, racing a production Corvette would only get you so far. To get to the next level, “purpose-built” race cars were the order of the day. Tube frames (aka “bird cages”) with a thin fiberglass or aluminum body were super lightweight and the low power-to-weight ratio made for a race car that was a handfu
By July 1962, with the overall design completed, including an all-aluminum fuel-injected 327 version of the street Corvette Fuelie engine, production began on just enough cars to qualify the Lightweight as a “production” car. The rest of the story is very well known and documented.
The original Grand Sport Corvette is considered by many to be the ultimate “could have been” Corvette. Well, when it comes to drivers that raced and loved Corvettes, El Monte, California race car driver, Dave MacDonald is arguably the greatest “could have been” Corvette race car driver.
