

Listen. Driving a pace car can be stressful. You have to successfully lead a bunch of really fast cars around a race track behind the wheel of your own very fast car. Any number of things can go wrong, but they usually don’t. That is, unless you’re General Motors product development head Mark Reuss.




Reuss was behind the wheel of the 2019 Corvette ZR1, leading the cars around the Belle Isle road course ahead of Sunday’s second round of the Detroit Grand Prix. It’s not his first rodeo; he’s been driving the pace car for the Detroit GP for years.

But today, he hit a bump. Quite literally. He ran right over a bump on a course notorious for how ragged it is. And lost control. And whacked right into the wall. Ouch.

It’s okay, Mark. We feel ya. Belle Isle is a hell of a track. It’s taken plenty of victims over the years, and honestly, it’s kinda surprising nothing like this has happened yet.




Reuss is totally fine, but he’s not going to drive the pace car around the next start of the race (Oriol Servia is about to take over). But we can’t really say anything about the state of his pride.

Update: In a statement released yesterday, GM also blamed “weather” and “track conditions”:

Correction: This story and headline originally said that it was a 2018 Corvette, it’s been corrected to 2019.