| Corvette Racing Boasts Significant Legacy of Success at Michelin GT Challenge August 21, 2024By Tony DiZinnoIMSA Wire Service |
 DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – “Nothing feels more like home than VIR in a Corvette.” The quote is Tommy Milner’s, the Washington, D.C., native who has long considered VIRginia International Raceway a home track. And it was spoken earlier in 2024 after the new Corvette Z06 GT3.R won a pair of races at VIR in another series. But the quote is an excellent, simple summation of Corvette Racing at VIR in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, particularly since 2014 when it became a GT-class only race. Corvette Racing has won three of the past four Michelin GT Challenge at VIR races and delivered six total wins at the track (2012, 2016, 2017, 2020, 2021, 2023). Longtime driver Antonio Garcia reflected on some of them, having won four of those six. |
 “I personally like this racetrack and Corvette Racing has always been successful there,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s because we run alone there as a GT-only race and that probably helps to keep everything tidy as far as strategy and the classes aren’t shuffling the order too much. “It suited the (Corvette) C7.R. It definitely suited the C8.R, so I’m looking forward to going back there and seeing where we are.” Under IMSA’s former class structure, VIR served as the stalwart GT-only event highlighting the GT Le Mans (GTLM) and Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) classes. In those years from 2014 to 2021, Michelin produced bespoke tires for each of its original equipment manufacturers competing in GTLM. At VIR, when Michelin took over race naming rights in 2016, the event gave the GTLM competitors their shot at an overall win and highlighted the best collaboration of teams, drivers and tire combinations. That frequently favored Corvette Racing, through its own run of chassis over the years. The ground-pounding, front-engine C7.R raced from 2014 to 2019, before the revolutionary mid-engine C8.R GTE-specification car premiered in 2020. It only had two years in GTLM before being modified to the GT3-specification type in 2022 to run in the Grand Touring Daytona Pro (GTD PRO) class that replaced GTLM, with another two-year run before the debut of the all-new Z06 GT3.R for 2024. The 2022 class structure change coincided with a shift from confidential tires to a single Michelin specification tire for all competitors in both GTD and GTD PRO, where Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports competes today. Corvette Racing made no secret of noting the challenges in adapting in 2022 but has gotten a handle on the new tire compound this year, the Pilot Sport Pro GT1 H1. |
 How did Corvette fare at VIR over the decade? Not too shabby. Garcia won with Jan Magnussen in 2016 after Magnussen scored the pole. The pair repeated the race win a year later and came second in 2018 en route to that year’s GTLM class championship. A third-place finish followed in 2019. Once the C8.R premiered, Corvette really got on a roll. Garcia, then paired with Jordan Taylor, took the 2020 victory before coming second to teammates Milner and Nick Tandy in 2021. The ‘21 race was a barnburner as both Corvettes engaged in a thrilling scrap with Kevin Estre’s WeatherTech Racing Porsche 911 RSR, in the second-to-last GTLM race. The C8.R GTD version finished second in 2022 with Garcia and Taylor, before returning to the top step last year with one of the most poignant wins in Corvette Racing’s program history. It served as the final win for the GTD-specification C8.R Corvette, the last for Corvette Racing solely as a factory team before its shift to a customer-focused program in 2024, and as Taylor’s last victory before he moved into Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) class racing with the Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura ARX-06 effort. “This will definitely be one of the most special wins I’ll ever have. This was a classic Corvette Racing victory,” Taylor said after last year’s win. |
 Garcia, who’d watched the finish from the pit box rather than the driver’s seat, admitted that was unusual. But he was impressed with the overall team effort. “Jordan was fantastic today,” Garcia said then. “It was very stressful for me! I’m not used to seeing that in the end! I prefer to be in the car, but you know when Jordan is in that he will do an amazing job.” A year later, Garcia is back at VIR, racing with another new co-driver, Alexander Sims, who shares the No. 3 Corvette Z06 GT3.R. Milner is with Nicky Catsburg in the sister No. 4 car. Sims is a past VIR winner, having triumphed with BMW in 2018 in GTLM, while Catsburg is set for his VIR debut. Garcia is keen to defend his triumph and add a second win this season to the one the No. 3 achieved at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. He also explained what he likes about VIR. “I like it there, especially after the new pavement (was added) from a couple of years ago. It really brought up the overall grip,” he said. “That made it very, very similar, even in GTD cars, pretty close to how the GTLM cars felt. So, more grip is always fun. You’re going faster, but obviously, the mistakes are there. If you make one, you can always hit something there. So, I always like it. It produces good racing and I always look forward to going back there and seeing how the weather does because at times it’s tricky.” Garcia and the rest of the GT D PRO and GTD competitors will take on the Michelin GT Challenge at VIR beginning with practice on Friday. Sunday’s race airs on USA Network, Peacock and IMSA Radio starting at noon ET. |
