Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 Races a U.S. Navy Fighter Jet

Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 Races A U.S. Navy Fighter Jet Arthur: I'm Arthur St. Antoine with Motor Trend Magazine. And I'm here in Pensacola, Florida today with the 2009 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 code name, Blue Devil. The fastest, most powerful and at roughly $117,000.00 by far the most expensive production automobile General Motors has ever built. That’s right more than $100,000.00 for a Chevrolet. But even at that price you could consider the ZR1 something of a bargain. That’s because this incredible Corvette loves fried Ferrari for breakfast. It lunches on smoked Lamborghini. Dinner, baked Porsche. The ZR1 is even known to snack on Nissan GTRs. Makes you wonder, can anything keep up with, much less intimidate Chevrolet’s awesome oddly unbelievable blue devil? How about a Blue Angel? Just saying the name Blue Angels gets the heart racing. Now the oldest active flight demonstration squad around the world the blues was created in 1946 to attract new recruits to the United States Navy by showcasing the talents of some of the finest pilots on the planet. Each year the team performs some 70 air shows for more than 15 million spectators. And what the six demo pilots do with their glistening Boeing F/A-18 Hornet strike fighter jets borders on the unbelievable. The shows high G aerobatic maneuvers which include loops, barrel rolls, minimum radius turns, inverted flight, place intense demands on pilots and aircraft alike. And if you think it all looks terribly dangerous well, you're right. In the Blue Angels 63-year history, nearly 10% of its pilots have died in training or air show accidents. Make no mistake this is literally one of the most breathtaking shows on earth. Maybe this will help explain just how challenging flying for the Blue Angles really is. If my shoulder we’re one hornet flying at formation, my hand would be another. That’s right, this guys often fly just three feet apart and at more than 400 miles per hour. The right stuff, this is righteous stuff. Now it’s time to meet my adversary, the man who will attempt to outgun me and my blue devil, meet the man in charge of narrating the shows from the ground and giving VIP rides in Blue Angels 7, the team’s only two-seat F/-18, Lieutenant Ben Walburn, call sign Baxter. Okay, Baxter this is the Corvette ZR1, the fastest car General Motors has ever built. In fact this is one of the fastest cars on the planet. 638 Supercharged V8 horsepower, it will do zero to 60 and 3.3 seconds, does the quarter mile and just over 11 seconds at 130 miles an hour, it’s very, very quick. What have you got? Ben: What I have here today is a twin engine tactical fighter. Boeing F/A-18 Hornet with about 32,000 pounds thrust come out the back end. Arthur: Ouch, so that’s quite a bit. Well, the ZR1 will go over 200 miles an hour, how fast does your hornet go? Ben: This hornet here can do about Mach 1.8 which is roughly about 1400 miles an hour. Arthur: Okay, well that’s pretty fast how much is it cost? Ben: This one here is about $25 million. Arthur: $25 million that’s more than Simon Cowell makes in a whole week. Well, do you think your blue angel has the stuff to beat my blue devil? Ben: We’ll take a look at it and we’ll try, we’ll see. Arthur: All right, let’s find out. Ben: All right, sounds good. Arthur: Our match up is simplicity itself. From a standing start we’ll run a straight with one mile drag race. First one across the finish line wins. The runways here at Naval Air Station Pensacola are 8,000 feet long. That means I’ll have enough time to accelerate the blue devil up to the mile marker at which point I’ll probably be doing around the 180 miles an hour. And then jump on the giant carbon ceramic binders and bring myself to a safe stop. Baxter and the blue angel will be in a parallel run way about 500 feet away. Hard to say how fast he’ll be going at the mile marker but definitely he’ll be airborne well before then. Now, I get the sense that Baxter is feeling pretty cocky about this jet right now. On the other hand, it’s going to take that hornet a while to spool up and my ZR1, well it is just blindingly quick off line. So I make a good enough start, well enough conjecture. Let’s do this thing. A good start will be critical for my chances. Baxter has 32,000 pounds of afterburner fed thrust on his side. But I've got the electrifying acceleration of 638 supercharged horsepower. My ZR1 can reach 60 miles an hour in just 3.3 second and blazes off the quarter mile in just over 11 seconds, 130 miles per hour. Hopefully the twin General Electric turbo fans in Baxter’s hornet will still be spooling up as I rocket into the lead and besides, I could get lucky. Maybe Baxter will accidentally leave his jet’s tail hook down or something. Ben: Three, two, one, go. Arthur: Well that wasn’t even close. All right, fine I’d be lying if I said I actually expected the blue devil to be able to beat the $25 million blue angel in a drag race. But I thought at least well I’d lead for a while. Instead Lieutenant Walburn and his F/A-18 already pulling ahead by around 80 miles per hour. I was barely at the half mile marker when he crossed the finish line, stood the hornet off his tail for a vertical climb, big show off. But the time I finally cross the finish line my self doing a 172 miles per hour Lieutenant Walburn was somewhere up in the clouds. He passes the finish line going about 345 miles per hour. I'm sure I creamed in my gas mouths. All right Baxter it wasn’t a contest your blue angel destroyed my blue devil I gave everything I have but that F/A-18 is just too fast, how did it feel for you in the cockpit? Ben: Pretty good that things get up and goes pretty good ones you put 32,000 pounds went off the back end. Arthur: Are you able to see the ZR1 that I did race? Ben: Yes, I did. I peaked over right away and kind of get a little bit of a lead on me initially and then I just kind of caught up and went by. Arthur: I thought it might last a little longer than I did but it didn’t. Well I’ll tell you, I think the only two jobs people really might envy each for are jet pilot and test car driver. Maybe Playboy photographer but right now the two of us maybe have the best jobs in the world. You like to do a little “trading places” today and maybe try my vehicle and I’ll try your jet. Ben: Sounds good let’s go. Arthur: All right, let’s try it out. Ben: All right. Arthur: Right now, Lieutenant Walburn is an old hand in breaking the sound barrier in the sky. But how would he feel piloting 638 super mow town horse powers across the ground, only one way to find out, strap Mr. Blue Angel in behind the wheel and take the blue devil out for a full throttle blast. Okay Baxter we’re in the ZR1 now you’ve got a chance to try the blue devil right from the blue angel. Ben: All right. Arthur: Ever driven in a Corvette before? Ben: I don’t think I can remember if I ever did one before. Arthur: All right, well this is ultimate Corvette. Ben: Okay. Arthur: So this will be a memorable experience. Ben: Okay. Arthur: Give it a shot. Ben: All right, we’ll see what we shall do. Arthur: Obviously respectful of high powered machinery. Lieutenant Walburn builds up to speed carefully. In no time though he’s gunning the ZR1 pat 130 miles per hours and loving it. Ben: Yeah. Arthur: Of course, I’m probably getting in his way a bit by watching his every move. So I decided to climb out and let Lieutenant Walburn fly solo. Naturally right away he transforms into a teenager with dad’s car keys. At this point in his career, Lieutenant Walburn has accumulated more than 1400 flight hours. And now about 20 minutes of sit time at the wheel of one of the world’s most awesome ground bound rockets. Now it’s my turn. In the ready room, I begin suiting up for the ride of a lifetime. A no holds barred flight in a Blue Angels F/A-18 Hornet. As crew chief Austin Armstrong belts me into the rear ejection seat of Blue Angel seven, he offers a few friendly words of advice, basically don’t touch anything. During hard air show maneuvers, Blue Angels pilots regularly experiences many times the force of gravity, often over Seven G, which makes a 200 pound man feel like he weighs 1400 pounds and can squeeze the blood out of his skull as if you we were caught in the jaws of a giant and visible lemonade press. Key to surviving a flight in an airborne centrifuge like the F/A-18 Hornet is mastering the so-called hick maneuver. Basically to keep from passing out during high G aerobatics, you have to squeeze your legs and grunt like hell to keep the blood up in your brain where it belongs. Done right it sound something like—or in my case, well you’ll see. [Demonstration] Lieutenant Walburn is going to break me in easy. On take off we’re going vertical. Ben: Are you ready to go fly today? Arthur: Let’s go fly out. Ben: All right. Arthur: Ready, hit it. Ben: As we climb on now. Arthur: Fantastic. Only five and a half g, of course, Mr. Blue Angel is only getting warmed up. How about moneme term Arthur. Ben: Take a deep breath, ready and hit it as well pull on up a little bit more g this time, there is five and a g’s keep that squeeze going. There we go. Nice work, there we go, now we get up on the top of the g it’s got to kind of relax on here. And there we go as it pulls up over the top and we’ll roll up right here just relax and we’re going to roll to the left. And that’s how we get it right behind someone. Arthur: Or an inverted negative G pushes over. Ben: There we go and we’re hanging upside down right now. Arthur: What's our negative G here? Ben: Negative G is negative one. And ones you get your bearing we’re going to go ahead and push forward a little bit of the negative two, two and a half G’s and until your eyeball are popping out. Arthur: They're coming out. Ben: All right, here we go. We’re going push forward a little bit. There it goes via 2 Gs and we’ll roll up for height. Ready hit it. There we go. Arthur: You got to get to there all those. They can get you man. Ben: There’s no technique to keep the blood down and that’s the problem. Arthur: And then comes a moment I’ve waited my whole life for, time to break the sound barrier. And not while sipping champagne in the now defunct Concorde but the way it’s supposed to be done, strapped into the ejection seat for the military fighter jet just a few hundred feet above the water. Ben: All right, the trigger is switched on. Arthur: Let’s go. Ben: And here we go we got a full afterburner, nose on over and I'll start my little stopwatch up here, there’s a 180 knots, that’s 200 knots, 225, 250, 275, 300 knots ready to accelerate to 180 miles an hour for 12 seconds. Be sure to be at 350 knots, there is 375, coming out for 400 knots and we have buck that were sudden to come up. 425, 450, its 475, we have 500 knots right now and I see the buck ever 4.8 there we go and .9 buffer, 585 knots there we go. That’s .94, .96 and you go at super stop my friend, there we go, that’s 666 notches I don’t what the blue devil for you there. Arthur: Any boats on the water right now we’ll rock into the sonic boom but in the cockpit I don’t feel anything just wonderful. Naturally Baxter isn’t going to let me get away without a little extra pressure, Blue Angels style. And time for a minimum radius turn. Ben: Ready hit it, there we go and we flight off this air this are seven and half beats. There you go and you got it. Arthur: Kelly Clarkson, Kelly Clarkson. Ben: There we go nice work seven point three. Arthur: Wow, I was starting to get tunnel of that one. Ben: Yeah, I already talk to yourself that’s great. And that’s how you motivate yourself. Arthur: As we come in to land one more brutal turn past seven G just for good measure. Ben: All right, good flex those legs. Take a deep breath, ready hit it. There we go, you’ve been doing good, there is seven. Nice work we got it, there we go overall loan out here. Arthur: Did you even hear a hick from Lieutenant Walburn, I didn’t. I don’t think the guy is even sweating. Ben: Nice job. Arthur: Now, I know how it feels to ride in a washing machine set on the spin cycle. Somehow I've managed not to pass out even during several turns of well over seven g. My lunch is even still where it belongs. My brain though is now edged with the memory I’ll never ever forget. How did these guys do this? Day in and day out, and with all the aircraft just a few feet away, oh, yeah they're Blue Angels. And what is our blue devil versus blue angel race prove you ask. Oh, please, if you have to ask you obviously don’t understand the deep seeded Darwinian forces that compel boys of all ages to play any opportunity with fast and expensive toys. That’s clear after racing the Corvette ZR1 gets the bowing F/A-18 Hornet however. Is that the USA builds two of the worlds most monumental and unforgettable speed machines. It doesn’t matter which flaming you prefer this is a American engineering at its best, red, white and very, very blue.