CORVETTE RACING AT LE MANS: Corvette C7.R Fights for Podium
Taylor racing toward third-place; No. 74 Corvette fighting back
 
LE MANS, France (June 15, 2014) – With six hours left to go, Corvette Racing’s No. 73 Chevrolet Corvette C7.R continued to fight for a podium position in the GTE Pro class during its debut at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Antonio Garcia ran fourth as he tried to chase down the third-place Porsche with both cars on the same lap after 18 hours.
 
The Spaniard was 68 seconds from third place in the car he shares with Jan Magnussen and Jordan Taylor. The first daylight hours Sunday saw the trio fighting back after losing laps to a faulty valve stem for the car’s air jack and twice being separated from its competitors by a safety car in the race’s opening 12 hours.
 
Richard Westbrook was fifth in class driving the No. 74 Corvette C7.R. The car had been running in podium contention as well before losing eight laps due to a slipped alternator belt and gearbox leak. Oliver Gavin, driving with Westbrook and Tommy Milner, had reported a low voltage reading and a burning smell inside the car near the halfway point. Upon further examination, the crew found the alternator belt covered oil.
 
The next Corvette Racing update from Le Mans will be the final race recap at 3 p.m. CT/9a.m. ET.
 
JAN MAGNUSSEN, NO. 73 CHEVROLET CORVETTE C7.R
“It’s going quite well, actually. We’ve got good speed in the car, handling is perfect and we’re going as fast as we can. We’re a lap behind the Porsche in third position, so it will be impossible to catch them on the track, but we’re trying. You never know what happens next. After all, this is Le Mans.”
 
OLIVER GAVIN, NO. 74 CHEVROLET CORVETTE C7.R
“It was quite tough. We lost telemetry. We had to change brakes; Richard was struggling with that. We thought we had fixed the telemetry but that didn’t work. We were trying to monitor the tire pressures, and that didn’t work. I thought I had a tire going down; the car was oversteering massively to the right and it was locking up the left-front. I think it was a symptom of the pressures being cold because we didn’t have a way to measure them with no telemetry. They couldn’t tell me what happened. The tire was low but it wasn’t going down. Then we had a belt come off the alternator and we may have a small gearbox leak. There are a lots of little things that just haven’t run with us over the last few hours. There is still long way to go so we can’t think it’s all over. But the car is quiet edgy to drive. Richard, Tommy and myself will try our hard to keep pushing and pushing. Everyone on the team is motivated but our backs are against the wall.”