Corvette Racing in Canada: Garcia, Magnussen Reclaim GTLM Points Lead with P3 Finish

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Corvette Racing in Canada: Garcia, Magnussen Reclaim GTLM Points Lead with P3 Finish


BOWMANVILLE, Ontario, Canada (July 12, 2015) – Corvette Racing and the Corvette Daytona Prototype program each had days to remember Sunday in the Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix presented by Hawk Performance. Jan Magnussen and Antonio Garcia regained the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship’s GT Le Mans Driver points lead while Jordan Taylor and Ricky Taylor led a 1-2 overall finish for the Corvette DP at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.

Garcia and Magnussen drove their No. 3 Chevrolet Corvette C7.R to a third-place finish – a result that seemed unlikely in the race’s opening half. The duo moved from seventh at the one-hour mark to the podium for the first time since the third race of the season at Long Beach. Doubly important is that they broke a first-place tie for driver points as Garcia took advantage of a mistake with two laps to go by the No. 25 BMW, whose drivers were tied with the No. 3 for the championship lead entering the race.

Garcia and Magnussen now lead by two points heading to Road America in August.

The No. 4 Corvette C7.R of Oliver Gavin and Tommy Milner finished fifth in class but gained three spots from the start in a solid late-race push. Both Corvettes were part of an opening-hour battle between five GTLM cars that ran one behind the other for a considerable stretch. With passing at a premium, each of the Corvette Racing pit crews gained their cars multiple positions on the final round of stops with 55 minutes remaining.

Of note, Garcia stopped between one and three laps later than some of the front-runners, which allowed him to go all-out over the final 53 minutes. He also set the fastest GTLM lap of the race.

The next race for Corvette Racing and the Corvette Daytona Prototypes is the Continental Tire Road Race Showcase from Road America on Sunday, Aug. 9.

Corvette Racing in Canada: Garcia, Magnussen Reclaim GTLM Points Lead with P3 Finish


ANTONIO GARCIA, NO. 3 CHEVROLET CORVETTE C7.R – FINISHED THIRD:

“When you have that kind of spread of only three or four tenths from first to eighth at this track, you can’t really pass. It was like a train of GTs all around and nobody could slipstream because everyone was pulled by each other. I couldn’t really go much faster and I decided to start saving fuel at the end of my first stint. So I think that saved us a lot which enabled us to run four or five laps at the end by myself, and that combined with a good last pit stop gave us an opportunity. If I might have been a second ahead I might have been able to go on to get second place. But third position with what wasn’t the best pace we’ve had this year is a positive result. We just need to focus a little bit more with track position with our Corvette. For sure qualifying is definitely important, especially on this kind of track. If the championship comes down to tracks like Road Atlanta, even if it’s a nine-hour race, we definitely need to be up front because then things are much easier.”

JAN MAGNUSSEN, NO. 3 CHEVROLET CORVETTE C7.R – FINISHED THIRD:

“For sure. I think the BMW ran out of tires at the end there. Antonio did a good job taking care of his. So with two laps to go, Antonio had a chance and he took it. It was fantastic. It puts us back in the points lead. We’re very, very happy. It didn’t look like that was going to happen at the beginning of the race. It was so difficult pass here. Track position was so important. I felt like in most areas we had an advantage over the other cars. But when you’re in traffic and in the draft and you don’t have the downforce when you’re stuck behind the guys in front of you, it makes it really difficult. To come away here in third place is a fantastic result. It was really a great job by the whole Corvette Racing team.”

OLIVER GAVIN, NO. 4 CHEVROLET CORVETTE C7.R – FINISHED FIFTH:

“There was always traffic in front of us, around us and passing us. It was a matter of managing the car and staying out of trouble. Our Corvette was pretty loose. It wasn’t that comfortable to drive and we had a bit of downshift problem. There was some kind of emergency mode the car went into, but we figured that out with Tommy in the car. I was able to sneak by one of the Porsches after he was hit by the DeltaWing, but he was able to get by me when I had one of the issues downshifting. It’s a tough day. We didn’t have the ultimate pace to race the guys up front. So it was all about maximizing the points we could get today.”

TOMMY MILNER, NO. 4 CHEVROLET CORVETTE C7.R – FINISHED FIFTH:

“We’ve seen here in the past where it’s hard to pass. You can get stuck behind some guys who aren’t that much slower than you are, but every tenth counts in our class. In the end, I’m happy with how the race went. I would have loved to have gotten another podium, but I’m proud of how we kept fighting and got our Corvette better for the end. Antonio and I were kind of pushing our way trying to get those BMWs. It’s tough here. Passing is not easy for anybody and it’s frustrating. I certainly can see that toward the end, I lost quite a bit of time. All in all, our Corvette was good. It was fast. It’s just one of those races that now you can look back and go, ‘man if we had run a little bit better, we would have been ahead of some of those guys.’ So we’ll just use that for more motivation going forward and try to qualify as high as we possibly can.”

DOUG FEHAN, CORVETTE RACING PROGRAM MANAGER:

“It was a very interesting race today. Into the program, we simply didn’t have the speed to compete at the front. What we did was make up for it with great fuel strategy, tremendous pit stops and at the end had adjusted tire pressures so we could run faster laps. You race till the end, and today Jan and Antonio were beneficiaries of the Corvette Racing mantra, ‘Never give up.'”


Source:
Corvette Racing

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