Second in GTD PRO points, No. 3 C8.R wants more starting in Elkhart Lake
DETROIT (Aug. 1, 2023) – It’s getting close to crunch time for Corvette Racing in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. And there’s no better place for the perennial powerhouse team to accelerate its title push than historic Road America.
The 4.048-mile, 14-turn road course is the site of the upcoming IMSA SportsCar Weekend, which culminates Sunday with the eighth round of this year’s GT Daytona (GTD) PRO championship. The Corvette Racing duo of Antonio Garcia and Jordan Taylor are hoping for a return to its winning ways in the No. 3 Mobil 1/SiriusXM Chevrolet Corvette C8.R.
The pairing won last month in class at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park – the first victory of 2023. A second win this season would go along nicely with a 2020 triumph at Road America in the GT Le Mans (GTLM) class. With only four races to go, victories are what will help the Garcia/Taylor tandem and the No. 3 C8.R team most in the hunt for the GTD PRO title.
Although they finished fourth two weeks ago at Lime Rock Park, the result was enough to move into second in class championship standings – 151 points from the leaders with 1,500 points still available with four races left. However, pole positions and race wins are the most immediate goals for Garcia and Taylor with points taking care of themselves after that.
To get back on the top step of the class podium, Corvette Racing will need to come to grips – literally – with a recently repaved Road America surface. In years past, Road America was notorious for eating up tires with high levels of degradation. That very likely won’t be the case this year with substantially more grip available to the field of 46 cars.
Road America and the Corvette brand have a lengthy history dating back nearly 60 years. Chevrolet routinely used the track to test and validate the performance of early-generation Corvettes with that tradition continuing into the present day. Road America was the site of the first on-track running of the Corvette C8.R in 2018, and the mid-engine Corvette continues to write new chapters at each event.
The IMSA SportsCar Weekend race at Road America is scheduled for 10:10 a.m. ET on Sunday, August 6. The race will air live on USA beginning at 11 a.m. ET and stream live on Peacock inside the United States and IMSA.com outside the U.S. IMSA Radio will air all on-track sessions beginning with Friday morning’s practice at IMSA.com with the race call also on XM 207 and SiriusXM Online 992.
ANTONIO GARCIA, NO. 3 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R:
“We don’t really know what to expect at Road America. It’s a kind of track where you can run a completely different configuration that is completely opposite than the rest. So maybe there’s more room to play with setup in order to go completely against everyone else. At most other IMSA tracks, everybody is kind of running the same full-downforce, full-everything. At Road America, there’s a little bit more play. I don’t know how the new surface will affect things. Tire degradation used to be very big there, but I anticipate the tire deg to not be as big as such a big thing there this year. Let’s see. We are definitely knocking on the door every single race.”
JORDAN TAYLOR, NO. 3 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R:
“Road America is great and has given me a lot of good memories. One of my first wins with the C8.R was there in a downpour late in the race. It wasn’t necessarily our strongest track last year, so hopefully with the new repave we can make some gains on everyone else. We’ve done some simulation work to perfect what we can do on our side to get as much performance out of the car as possible. From this point, it’s all about going for race wins.”
2023 WeatherTech SportsCar Championship – GTD PRO
(After seven of 11 events)
Driver Standings
1. Ben Barnicoat/Jack Hawksworth – 2,462
2. Antonio Garcia/Jordan Taylor – 2,311
3. Daniel Juncadella/Jules Gounon – 2,302
4. Klaus Bachler/Patrick Pilet – 2,281
5. Alex Riberas/Ross Gunn – 2,083
Team Standings
1. No. 14 Vasser Sullivan – 2,462
2. No. 3 Corvette Racing – 2,311
3. No. 79 WeatherTech Racing – 2,302
4. No. 9 Pfaff Motorsports – 2,281
5. No. 23 Heart of Racing Team – 2,083
Manufacturer Standings
1. Lexus – 2,462
2. Chevrolet – 2,311
3. Mercedes-AMG – 2,302
4. Porsche – 2,281
5. Aston Martin – 2,094
Source:
Corvette Racing at Chevrolet
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