What might have been a victory for the No. 3 Corvette C8.R turned to a fourth place finish in GTD-Pro at Sunday’s MOTUL Course de Monterey at Laguna Seca. With the field shaping up for a sprint to the finish, confusion during a yellow in the final hour led to Garcia inadvertently following the GTD-Pro leader in the No. 23 The Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 around the safety car which resulted in a late-race penalty that ended any chance for victory.

While the incident was discussed in the team’s after-action report, they have found the need to further address the penalty. Posted on Twitter, Corvette Racing issued the following statement:

Corvette Racing Fans!

We wanted to provide further clarification regarding the unfortunate penalty we received during the recent race at Laguna Seca.

During a full course caution, the pace car is deployed to pick up the overall race leader, often causing a separation between different classes. In this particular instance, the GTD class leader found themselves in front of the pace car while most of the GTD field remained behind it.

In such cases, the GTD leader must drive around the track until they reach the back of the pack and is positioned behind the pace car and overall leader, to get the rest of the same class cars in the correct running order the rest of the class cars behind the pass car need to also circle the track, so they are position behind their respective class leaders. To accomplish this, a procedure called a “Pass Around” is implemented.

Class cars behind the pace car become eligible for the Pass Around and are allowed to overtake the pace car, rejoining the field at the rear, behind the class leader.

During the race, a similar scenario occurred, but with a twist. The GTD AM leader was positioned in front of the pace car, whereas the GTD Pro leader was not. When the “Pass Around” was announced, all GTD cars, including the GTD Pro leader, moved to the right and began to pass around.
However, the GTD Pro leader should have stayed in line, and we should not have followed him.

By the time we realized our mistake, it was too late, and we unfortunately received a penalty for an improper Pass Around.
The penalty required us to make a stop and hold for a duration equal to two race laps, resulting in a hold time of 2 minutes and 50 seconds, ultimately putting us two laps down.
Antonio is still not happy with what happened, and it’s just something that has to be chalked up to being an unfortunate racing incident that can happen to the best of racers. Following Sunday’s race, Antonio said:

“It’s a situation where when it’s green, you’re fighting all the GTDs. But when it comes to the safety car, we aren’t the same category.
So we need to figure that out. The safety car split the GTD field. The GTD leader was the real GT leader, so that’s why everyone behind us moved to the right to get a pass-around, and the 23 moved to the right, as well.

But because we were the GTD PRO leaders, we should have stayed where we were. But that’s the way the rules are. I just made a mistake and went to follow the 23 when they were wrong. I had a big queue of GTDs behind me, and all I could see behind me were GT cars moving to the right. So that’s what confused me. If I could have seen the Mercedes or Lexus GTD PRO cars behind me staying to the left, I would have figured it out.

But there were a ton of cars between us. It’s a mistake that shouldn’t happen. On race pace, we had a car to win. We did everything right on strategy to be in the lead. As we showed at the end, I think we had a little more on tire degradation. We’ll review what happened, do a full analysis of the situation, and I know this won’t happen again.”