AUSTIN, Texas (May 6, 2017) – Corvette Racing’s Antonio Garcia and Jan Magnussen won their second race of the season in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship on Saturday with a GT Le Mans (GTLM) victory in the Advance Auto Parts SportsCar Showdown.
The victory at Circuit of The Americas gives the pairing the lead in the GTLM Driver’s Championship, as well as moves Chevrolet into first place in the class’ Manufacturer’s standings. Full report to follow…
ANTONIO GARCIA, NO. 3 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C7.R – GTLM RACE WINNER: “I think it is the perfect way to come back after what happened at Long Beach. We have had four races this year with zero mistakes by Corvette Racing in any of them. That is what it takes to be there if you have the pace to win. If you don’t have the pace, you finish fourth – like what happened at Daytona. Then we took the win at Sebring; that one was a bit unexpected but we really worked for that.
“On pure pace we didn’t have the best car. But it is not the first time we have won here not being being the fastest. It was a perfect call to pit just before the second yellow. That gave us track position. It feels like we put a lot of pressure on our competitors and they started to make mistakes. I’m very happy with that if that is what it takes. From then I just tried to maintain the gap to second place. We were all just counting down minutes and laps, and seeing how much slower I could go. I didn’t care so much about the other car catching me because I don’t mind winning by three seconds or 20 seconds. I knew that if there was a late yellow, which we had, I needed to have better tires.
“I don’t know if I saved enough tires to be faster than (Alexander Sims), but in a way that was enough. I am very glad and very happy for Corvette Racing. It is a shame the No. 4 car had that contact at Turn One. That was very unfortunate. But again, it is three wins in a row for Corvette Racing. I think no one expected that, but that is what it takes for those results: Zero mistakes.”
JAN MAGNUSSEN, NO. 3 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C7.R – GTLM RACE WINNER: “This is a nice way to move on from what happened at Long Beach. But it was a crazy race. So much stuff happened all the way through from Turn One when a few cars got taken out and got in trouble. I got a good start and got clear of all of that. My first stint I was trying to pay good attention to the tires and give good feedback to the team to the changes that needed to be made for Antonio. When he got in, the team made a fantastic call on that pit stop to beat everybody out… again! Then a few cars got in trouble and got some penalties that gave Antonio a massive lead which he was kind of nurturing. I don’t think he was pushing too hard, just making sure not to make any mistakes. It is a fantastic result for the team. This is a really, really nice way to head to Le Mans.”