It would be when the first corner appears.
Maybe I should save the lolcantturn trolling to 4chan /o/.
I do love me some Vette though, jokes aside.
HP is very useful coming out of a turn, and a Corvette has far more advanced handling technology than ricers. New generation corvettes are more agile than you might think, they are designed for track racing, not straight lines, like most other powerful American cars (mustang, charger, camaro, ect). Corvette won Le Mans 7 years in a row (2001-2008) before retiring, beating ferrari, aston martin, BMW, mercedes, ect.
A ricer would need extreme mods to compete with a standard vette (not even Z06 or ZR-1).