Corvette Racing packed up after Wednesday night's qualifying session and wondered how its thundering C7.Rs went from winning the GTE-Pro class last year to scraping the bottom of the time sheets.
Holding a firm 13th and 14th in the 14-car class, the best Corvette lap--produced by the No. 64 entry--was a full 4.663 seconds behind home state rival Ford, which led the first round of qualifying as its new GTs went 1-2-4-5.
The second of the C7.R twins, the No. 63 car, was 6.782 behind, and this comes after the No. 63 topped the official Le Mans test day on June 5 by a margin of 0.280 seconds. The best Ford, by contrast, was 0.917 seconds behind Corvette at the test.
The FORCED Balance of Performance mandated by the Le Mans organizers took power away from the Corvettes by reducing the size of the holes that feed air to its V8 engines, and with less grunt to rocket out of the corners—and to reach impressive top speeds—the C7.Rs actually ended up slower than all GTE-Pro cars and four of the year-old models in the GTE-Am category.
"I think the timing sheets pretty much speak for themselves," Corvette Racing program manager Doug Fehan told RACER.
"We ran as good as we can run. That's what our performance level is at this point in time. We don't anticipate anything changing."
The Le Mans organizers rarely make BoP adjustments prior to the race, which dispels any belief the Corvette team is running slower than they are capable to receive a BoP break of their own. If a change were to be made, it would likely involve a cautious approach to avoid skewing the balance towards a different manufacturer.
"It was all pretty close on the test day, we have the fourth-fastest [top] speed on the Mulsanne, then they made the forced BOP adjustment and took away some of our air, and last night's performance was representative of that change," Fehan said.
With a steady rain falling over Le Mans today, and the final two-hour qualifying session set for 7-9 p.m. local this evening, the Corvettes could start the race from deep in the pack and have significant ground to cover in order to challenge for a repeat win.
