JORDAN TAYLOR, NO. 3 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R – RACE WINNER: “This win is down to Corvette Racing calling that strategy to get us track position. When they told me the fuel number, I was definitely worried but the car was so good in fuel-save mood that it helped me save the tires. I know the announcement (about going to GTP in 2024) has come out, but I’m glad to give these guys one back.More on the win: “We were pushing the whole race even on the first cycle to close the gap to the Lexus to see if we could make them make a mistake. When the second yellow came out, I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. Those guys really restart strong so I thought we were kind of out of it. But the Corvette guys made an amazing call to short-fill on the last stop to get us out front and get the track position. It was down to saving fuel and managing tires from there. I was counting down the laps from about 25 to go, so I was very happy to see that checkered flag.”On the next two races with Corvette: “It’s been an amazing run. This one is definitely for all the Corvette Racing fans out there. Since the announcement, the outpouring from the fans from the Corvette side has been the best part, just to see the appreciation and respect on my decision to move away. Corvette Racing will always be my family no matter where I am, what I drive and what I do. Deep in my heart, I’m a Corvette guy.”How special is this win? “This will definitely be one of the most special wins I’ll ever have. This was a classic Corvette Racing victory. We didn’t have the fastest car. Antonio was able to stay in contention in that first stint, and we made some gains on fuel-savings in that first stint to get closer to the Lexus for when I was in the car. In that last pit cycle, the guys made an amazing call on the short-fill to get that track position. They gave me a fuel number to hit to get to the end, and it was my job to save that amount and not lose any laptime. We nailed it. The fuel reserve came on, but it must have been tight because I couldn’t do a burnout in the end! This win goes to Corvette Racing.”On if the undercut strategy would have worked if the 14 didn’t stall: “If they had beaten us out, there’s no way I would have gotten by him unless he made some mistakes. In this series these days, one mistake can lose you the victory. We’ve seen that this year. We probably lost two or three this year that we could say that we could have won. They’re probably going to say the same thing after this one… that they could have won had they not stalled. Today was our day. It was a very deserving victory and down to our guys making that call.”The attempted pass on the 14 on the second restart into T14: “I didn’t have a ton of confidence going in there. The lap before I braked kind of late and had a bunch of ABS interaction and almost hit the back of him. That lap, I knew I was going to be off-line so I wasn’t 100 percent confident that I’d make the corner. He did the exact same thing to me last year where I had a similar run. I knew he was going to go deep. At that point in the race, I knew that had we gotten track position then it would have transformed the race for us but I also didn’t want to throw away the race with an hour-and-a-half to go. I knew there was a lot of racing to go. We hadn’t done a full stint yet to see where all the cars were on tire deg. I knew we had a lot to play for, and it wasn’t worth taking that big risk.”On seeing the 14 come out of pitlane after the last stop: “The engineers just told me to push on the out-lap, so I knew it was all down to my out-lap, my in-lap and the short fill and calculating how much we needed to jump them. They told me when he was leaving the pits, and it was quite early so they didn’t say he stalled; they said he’s leaving so I thought he’d be pretty far ahead of me by the time I got there. I crested the hill and saw he was still at pit-out, and I had so much momentum that I knew for sure I was going to go by him. I’m not sure what he was doing, but he drifted all the way across the racing line. He for sure saw me, so I’m not sure what that was about. But I wasn’t going to lift. I would have driven through him if I had to at that point to get the lead.“It was a sigh of relief because I didn’t know I had to save fuel at that point. But they told me after that what the fuel number was, and the stress crept in until I kind of found a rhythm of hitting that number with my lift points and finding the laptime. Once I got into a rhythm, I felt pretty good. With about 15 laps to go, I felt pretty confident that the tires weren’t dropping too much.” |