The Corvette ZR1’s 233-mph run had to start in a virtual world
Last October, the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 set a top speed of 233 mph on consecutive runs around a closed track. That’s not the fastest street-legal production car in the world: the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 300+ will, as the name implies, top 300 mph. What’s special about the ZR1, then? Its $174,995 starting price may sound expensive, but it’s a steal compared to the Bugatti, which costs somewhere north of $4 million. The ZR1 is officially the world’s fastest production car available for less than $1 million.Â
The ZR1 achieved that speed on a massive test track in Papenburg, Germany, a place where the banking is so steep that the drivers suffered through 1.7 vertical Gs on the turns. That’s just one number out of an endless series of figures that the team behind that record-setting run calculated well in advance, tapping into simulations usually reserved for more utilitarian jobs, like figuring out how steep a grade a Silverado can tow up before blowing a gasket.
Here, the only number that really mattered was top speed â a figure that, in simulation, differed from reality by less than half of one percent. This is how they did it.
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