Racer Profile: John Heinricy
John Heinricy believes he has a dream job, and we tend to agree. John holds the position of Director of High Performance Vehicle Operations for GM's Performance Division. He and his team are instrumental in developing, building, and testing every high-performance vehicle that GM sells. It is in the latter capacity that Heinricy and his staff make frequent trips to Germany's Eiffel region, home of the famous Nordschleife Nrburgring. John has personally made over 600 laps around this 13-mile, 170-turn race track.
John was one of the drivers who drove this pre-production '89 ZR-1 to an international speed record of 174.5 mph.
Heinricy joined GM in 1970, after graduating from The South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. He has held many desirable positions during his long career, including that of vehicle-development manager for the Corvette platform.
As if managing the team responsible for GM's performance image wasn't enough, John also plays with cars in his down-time. Since getting started in racing in 1984, he has won eight SCCA National Championships, including five consec-utive Touring 1 titles in a Phoenix Motorsports/Goodyear-sponsored C5 Z06.
This Corvette C5-R was raced in 1998 and 1999. John was one of the original drivers involved in the C5-R program.
Heinricy has also won numerous 24-hour races with Morrison Motorsports and competed at the Daytona 24 Hours and the 12 Hours of Sebring in Morrison Corvettes. He was even part of the team that drove a stock, Morrison-prepped ZR-1 to an FIA speed record at Fort Stockton, Texas, in 1990. The car averaged 174.5 mph for 24 hours, breaking a 50-year-old record held by Mercedes Benz.
Heinricy was also a factory team driver for the '99 C5-R racing effort, and he has notched several Second Place finishes at the wheel of a SPEED GT Cadillac CTS-V. Recently, he drove a Carsport/Callaway Z06.R to three impressive finishes in European GT3 racing.
John lives in Michigan with his wife, Rita.