Corvette celebrates America's upcoming 250th birthday with Indy 500 stunt
Cody Bulkley could have easily been mistaken for one of the 33 drivers competing in Sunday's Indy 500 race.
Dressed in his black racing suit and helmet, Bulkley was at Indianapolis Motor Speedway for another important event: piloting a 1,250-horsepower Corvette ZRX1 down a stretch of the track as 250 candles burned dangerously close. The goal? For the ZR1X to "blow out" the candles on a 186-foot cake that had been carefully prepped by a prop design team.
The America 250th birthday stunt was planned weeks ago by Chevrolet and involved nearly 40 people. Bulkley, a chassis control integration engineer on the Corvette, was asked to perform the stunt last month, which he practiced at General Motors' proving ground in Milford, Michigan.
"We set up 250 pinwheels and measured everything out to see if the whoosh from the LT7 exhaust would actually put the fire out," Bulkley told ABC News. "[Saturday's stunt] worked perfectly on the first try and we nailed the drift."
He added, "This is a pretty ridiculous maneuver in general, to be able to do this, to get IMS [Indianapolis Motor Speedway] to allow it. We knew we had to go big. For the company to support this, live and in front of people, it really shows how awesome our leadership is, how committed they are to the brand and the culture."
The cake, of course, was not made of flour and buttercream (likely Styrofoam). And the oversized candles were actually lit with propane gas. Fire marshals stood nearby as Bulkley strapped into the ZR1X, the most powerful and extreme Corvette in the brand's history. Bulkley said it took about 3.4 seconds to "blow out" the long row of candles, hitting a top speed of 90 mph.
Could he have gone faster? Sure, but Bulkley was holding out for a few laps around the oval-shaped track, where the ZR1X could truly stretch its legs and reach a top speed of 225 mph.
"This car is so fast and so fun and on a racetrack you're nearly going to set a record everywhere you go just by showing up," he said. "It's really got the most depth and breadth of any Corvette."
Chevrolet would not say how much the birthday stunt cost, but the U.S. brand has executed similar stunts across the U.S. In February, a Silverado ZR2 truck was placed on top of Utah's Castleton Tower. In 2023, the brand introduced the world to the Corvette E-Ray by having a driver rip donuts at The Rink at Rockefeller Center in New York. The ZR1X was also the pace car at this year's Indy 500 race.
