• Corvette C8.R riding four-race GT Le Mans win streak• Garcia, Taylor winners of last two IMSA rounds• Chevrolet enters with expanded lead in Manufacturer’s Championship• Corvette Racing with 10 victories at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta• Six-hour endurance race is team’s first since WEC at Circuit of The Americas DETROIT (Sept. 2, 2020) – Corvette Racing returns to the endurance stage this weekend in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship on a four-race win streak and an increased margin in the series’ GT Le Mans (GTLM) category. |
The TireRack.com Grand Prix at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta is the Corvette program’s sixth race of the year and fifth in the IMSA Championship. At six hours in duration, it also marks the first long-distance endurance race for the team since a February round of the World Endurance Championship and the first in IMSA since the season-opening Rolex 24 At Daytona in January – also the debut of the mid-engine Chevrolet Corvette C8.R. Much has changed since the early days of 2020, to say the least. Racing is back since an extended shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and since that time no team has been on as big a roll as Corvette Racing. The team has reeled off four consecutive victories – three by GTLM Driver’s Championship leaders Antonio Garcia and Jordan Taylor in the No. 3 Mobil 1/SiriusXM Chevrolet Corvette C8.R, including two weeks ago at VIR. Teammates Oliver Gavin and Tommy Milner in the No. 4 Mobil 1/SiriusXM Corvette C8.R have reeled off a win and runner-up finish since Corvette Racing returned to action at Daytona in July. Those results have moved them up to third in the GTLM Championship, and the combined efforts of the two Corvettes have Chevrolet comfortably ahead in the class Manufacturer’s Championship. The four-race win run has been remarkable in the ways that the program has claimed victory. Rather than having outright power and pace of its competitors, Corvette Racing has relied on execution and minimizing mistakes while capitalizing on those of others. This weekend’s race takes the place of the Sahlen’s Six Hours at The Glen, originally set for late June at Watkins Glen International. The move to Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta means Corvette Racing – and the rest of the WeatherTech Championship – will compete in two long-distance events at the circuit in less than two months with Petit Le Mans scheduled for Oct. 15-17. The Corvette Racing program has won 10 times at Road Atlanta, eight of those in long-distance endurance rounds. Gavin is IMSA’s winningest active driver at the circuit with five wins, and Taylor is a past IMSA winner at the track, having won twice in a prototype. Road Atlanta is one of the tracks at which Corvette Racing tested the mid-engine C8.R during its development phase, albeit more than a year ago. It has been a good omen so far with victories at Daytona, Sebring, Road America and VIR – all places where the Corvette C8.R was tested in the past. Both the Corvette C8.R and the 2020 Corvette Stingray production car were developed simultaneously with a deeper level of technology transfer between the race car and a production Corvette than ever before, which helps contribute to many of its advancements. As a result, the C8.R shares the highest percentage of parts between the production and race car than any previous generation. The TireRack.com Grand Prix is scheduled for 11:35 a.m. ET on Saturday with live coverage on NBC Sports Network starting at 11:30 a.m. ET before continuing on Trackpass at 12:30 p.m. and returning to NBCSN at 2:30 p.m. IMSA Radio will stream Friday’s qualifying as well as the race on IMSA.com, which also will host live timing and scoring. |