Nothing on United States highways is more All-American than the pickup truck. And while pickup trucks were originally designed to be work vehicles, their combination of utility and rugged sportiness have proved attractive to lots of people who never go near a construction site or carry anything heavier than a bag of groceries. Not surprisingly, racers embraced the pickup truck, too – first, in Baja-type off-road competition where strength counted for more than performance. It wasn’t long before pickups appeared in a variety of closed-course competitions, including a professional road-racing series sanctioned by the Sports Car Club of America in the ’80s.
But it’s been during the past decade that truck racing has really taken off. The recipe is a potent one: take the standard tube-frame from a regular stock car and wrap it with a steel body in the silhouette of a full-size pickup. Add a 600-horsepower V8 engine and a four-speed transmission. Finally, mix with a couple dozen similar vehicles and turn loose on an oval track. The result? The most popular form of truck racing in history and one of the three major forms of stock car racing in America.
The iRacing Chevrolet Silverado is a virtual duplicate of its real-world counterpart; it behaves identically, and responds to the same chassis and aerodynamic adjustments. Just as in the physical world, the Silverado is at home on a wide variety of ovals, from tight half-mile bullrings, to flat, open-radius miles to 1.5-mile and 2.5-mile high-bank superspeedways. As you’d expect, as the lap length increases, so does the aero effect, making drafting a critical skill in this type of racing.
