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#5668 - 06/08/22 07:00 PM Re: 24 Hours of LeMans - June 2022 [Re: teamzr1]  
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CORVETTE RACING AT LE MANS: C8.Rs Advance to Hyperpole

Garcia, Tandy among GTE Pro leaders in first official practice, qualifying sessions

Both C8.R Corvette Racing entries advanced Wednesday to the Hyperpole final qualifying session for the 24 Hours of Le Mans with the pair of mid-engine Chevrolet Corvette C8.Rs continuing their strong showing from Sunday’s Test Day.

Antonio Garcia, driving the No. 63 Mobil 1/SiriusXM Chevrolet Corvette C8.R, was the second-fastest driver in an ultra-competitive GTE Pro category with a lap of 3:51.132 (131.855 mph).
A three-time Le Mans winner, Garcia was only 0.133 seconds off the class-leading pace of Laurens Vanthoor.
Nick Tandy wasn’t far behind in the No. 64 Mobil 1/SiriusXM Corvette. His best lap of 3:51.491 (131.669 mph) put him comfortably inside the top-six, as the six fastest cars in each class from Wednesday qualifying advance to Thursday’s 30-minute Hyperpole session.

Wednesday’s five hours of practice saw all six Corvette Racing drivers cycle through the C8.Rs.
Aside from a brief heavy shower during the qualifying session and a couple of slow zones in the two-hour night session, neither of the Corvettes lost significant running time due to technical or mechanical issues.

Corvette Racing will contest the 24 Hours of Le Mans on June 11-12 with the green flag set for 4 p.m. CET and 10 a.m. ET. MotorTrend TV will air the race live with the MotorTrend App adding coverage of official practices and qualifying Thursday.
Live audio coverage will be available from Radio Le Mans starting with Wednesday’s first official practice session.

ANTONIO GARCIA, NO. 63 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R SECOND IN GTE PRO QUALIFYING:

“It was a good day and so far the car is good. We had a clean run in free practice to validate a few things we had in mind and putting things together from the Test Day. You always get a little nervous with this new qualifying format because in an hour, anything can happen. We saw that last year when I got caught with a ton of red flags and slow zones.

I knew we had the speed, but you had to put down a lap or two, to be sure. We did it and did it early enough with the unexpected rain. I couldn’t believe that after I went out for my second run that the team told it was raining hard. Even at Pit-In, there were zero drops.
It was another Le Mans qualifying, and tomorrow is the real one. The important thing was to run as much as we could tonight and again tomorrow. We have five more hours of free practice left. Let’s see if we can improve things even more.”

NICK TANDY, NO. 64 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R FOURTH IN GTE PRO QUALIFYING:

“Raceweek is always a little bit different from the Test Day.
That’s always the first day when the public roads are opened up to us and the rubber from the tires start going down. We’re pleased to see that the car is still in excellent shape from the test.
We’re continuing to work through and figuring out what tire compounds we want to be running at certain times. So far, the practice is going well. In qualifying, the key aim of course was to get both cars into the Hyperpole. We managed to get some idea of what we need to do to gain a bit more performance for Hyperpole.
From our side, it’s been a pleasing day.
Everything that we have worked on has made sense with what we hoped would happen with the car. Hopefully the rest of the week will go as smoothly as today.”


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#5669 - 06/09/22 09:11 AM Re: 24 Hours of LeMans - June 2022 [Re: teamzr1]  
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Third practice completed

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#5671 - 06/09/22 11:37 AM Re: 24 Hours of LeMans - June 2022 [Re: teamzr1]  
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C8.R has been the first car in GTD-Pro to break into the 3 minute 49 seconds for a lap and wins the Hyperpole for the start of the race this weekend
Both C8.Rs will start the race up front.

Corvette Racing secured a front-row lockout in GTE Pro, as Nick Tandy set the only sub-3m50s effort in the class at the wheel of the American brand’s #64 C8.R.

Tandy’s best of 3m49.985s compared to 3m50.177s set by Antonio Garcia in the sister #63 car and a 3m50.377s from the best of the works Porsche 911 RSR-19s in third place, the #91 example of Frederic Makowiecki.

Porsche swept the second row of the grid as Laurens Vanthoor took fourth place in the #92 car ahead of the two AF Corse-run Ferrari 488 GTE Evos, Antonio Fuoco leading James Calado.


The story of GTE Pro was domination from Corvette Racing. Its C8.Rs locked out the class front row after strong performances from Nick Tandy and Antonio Garcia. Tandy set the pole time in the No. 64, with a 3m49.985s, the Briton the only driver in a GTE car to set a sub 3m50s time.

“It feels fantastic to have taken pole,” Tandy said. “I’m seeing lots of Corvette flags at the circuit, it’s great for everyone who is here to support us.
Let’s hope we can keep these cars out front for 24 hours. The GTE cars are so fun to drive with fresh tires and low fuel.”

A late improvement from Garcia in the No. 63 was good enough for second, pushing the No. 91 Porsche of Fred Makowiecki to third after he and teammate Laurens Vanthoor in the No. 92 opted to sit out the first half of the 30-minute shootout.

It was a rather quiet run for AF Corse, its pair of Ferraris only capable of fifth and sixth, setting times in the 3:51




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#5672 - 06/09/22 11:54 AM Re: 24 Hours of LeMans - June 2022 [Re: teamzr1]  
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To achieve the fastest lap time possible in the Hyperpole session, the competitors make some specific adjustments to their cars.

At 20:00, the 23 cars qualified for Hyperpole will take to the track in a test of sheer speed.
The drivers appointed by the teams will aim to clock the fastest possible lap and secure pole position in their respective classes.
For the manufacturers competing, pole is a matter of prestige as Pascal Vasselon, technical director at Toyota Gazoo Racing explains:

“Taking pole position is not a priority, but we know that it has an impact with the fans and the media.
We’re also competitors at heart, so of course we’re proud to start from pole in an iconic race like the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Which is why we take Hyperpole very seriously, and we use the practice sessions to do a few preparatory runs.”

For this key phase in the proceedings, the cars are tuned for peak performance. “We seek the optimum parameters for each setting,” explains Thomas Tribotté, Hypercar operating engineer with Alpine Elf Team. “The ride height and amount of fuel are kept to the minimum.

The car’s balance is also adjusted.” The weight and grip of the car are different than in a regular race stint. As a result, adjustments also need to be made to the overall configuration. However, there is less scope for changes to the mechanical and aerodynamic parameters in a Hypercar than there was in an LMP1.

To achieve peak speed, you would expect the teams to push their engines at full power. But there are two schools of thought. At Toyota Gazoo Racing, Vasselon says that “when we combine the power of our engine and our hybrid system, we have a maximum potential of almost 1,000 horsepower.

However, the regulations only permit a maximum 677 horsepower at any one time. That means that boosting engine power for a qualifying lap is a thing of the past. We’re all out, at full power, all the time.” There is a different approach at Alpine. “We don't unleash the engine’s full power.
We’re quite conservative because we’re working with the race in mind,” adds Tribotté.

In addition, for Hyperpole the cars are fitted with soft tires, which ensure greater speed but only last a few laps.

Is Hyperpole the most enjoyable session for the engineers?
Tribotté anwsers: “It’s pretty unique. Even though the race remains our priority, we get drawn into the whole thing!”


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#5673 - 06/09/22 12:50 PM Re: 24 Hours of LeMans - June 2022 [Re: teamzr1]  
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Driver Jordan Taylor said it only took him a “couple of laps” to adapt back to the GTE-spec Chevrolet Corvette C8.R after spending the first part of the year in the manufacturer’s GTD variant in IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship competition.

The two-time IMSA GTLM champion, who currently sits second in the WeatherTech Championship GTD Pro standings alongside co-driver Antonio Garcia, is again joined by Nicky Catsburg in this weekend’s 24 Hours of Le Mans.

While it’s the same lineup that claimed GTD Pro class honors in the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, the trio are in a significantly different-handling car.

The GTD-spec variant features less power, additional weight, the use of anti-lock brakes, customer Michelin tires among other changes to put it in line with FIA GT3-homologated machinery.

“We’re back to driving the car for what it was designed to do,” Taylor told Sportscar365.

“It feels more like the C8.R should feel like, more of a proper race car, more pure, no ABS, the confidential tires.
“It definitely takes time to re-learn the limits of it. It’s harder to find the limit and be on the limit of it and kind of extract everything out of the car.
“I think the ABS hides a lot of issues and masks a lot of problems.
“I’ve enjoyed the challenge, coming back to it. It was a bit of a learning curve to get back into it. Now I feel I’m back home again.”

Taylor said his re-acclimatization to the GTE contender went smoother than initially expected.
“I was worried when I’d get in, I’d just flat-spot the tires on the first laps and have no feel in my foot again for the brakes,” he said. “But it came back quickly.

“I think the biggest thing is understanding the tire again. This is also a different tire that we’ve had here last year.
“Understanding the limits of it, what it likes, what it doesn’t like, what kind of temperature range it works in… That’s been the biggest thing.
“I think that’s been the best part of having the 64 car in the WEC all year is having them develop [the new tire] and understand it so when we get here, the car is pretty close to being where we want it to be.

“Then the drivers can get up to speed and only do fine adjustments.”
With this year’s Le Mans likely the final outing for the GTE-Pro class, and GTE-spec machinery only eligible in GTE-Am until next year, Taylor admitted he will miss the platform;

While IMSA has already made the switch, the FIA World Endurance Championship and European Le Mans Series will adopt the formula in 2024, with further details to be announced on Friday.
“It’s such a cool class,” he said. “I’ll miss the tire development side of it. The tires are unbelievably impressive how well they work and to see how Michelin develops it and work on it and how we pick a tire.

“That whole process has been an interesting experience.
“I’ve never been a big fan of ABS, especially in professional racing, where I think it takes a huge skill out of the drivers’ hands
“It changes the racing, the race-ability of the races is difficult when you do find an amateur, it’s always hard to pass them because they’re just using the ABS to hold you off.
“For me, that part I don’t love. But I like the aspect of it bringing more cars to the grid, more competition.
“I’d rather have more guys to race against than a small grid with no ABS. For me, it takes away a little bit of the purity of the sport at a professional level.”

Corvette in Good Shape Heading into Hyperpole, Race

Taylor said the Pratt & Miller-run squad has been pleased with the pace of the two Corvettes following the test day and start of official track action on Wednesday.

“I’ve been a little surprised how quick we’ve been,” he said. “The car feels a lot better than it did last year.
“Last year was obviously our first year here with this car, and we didn’t have a lot of time to really adjust it last year while we were here.
“Since then, we’ve spent a ton of time in the simulator and working on the tire development side. I think we’ve made a lot of gains on our own.

“The car at the test day, quite honestly, felt better than it did almost all race week last year.
“We’ve been super happy with it all six drivers are comfortable.
But the fastest car doesn’t always win here. I’m sure everyone else is still working on their programs as well.”


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#5674 - 06/09/22 03:38 PM Re: 24 Hours of LeMans - June 2022 [Re: teamzr1]  
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Fifth and final practice completed before the 24-hour race this weekend

In GTE-Pro, Corvette Racing continued to lead the way, with Nicky Catsburg the quickest aboard the No. 64 Corvette C8.R by reeling off a best lap of 3:52.710.

The Dutchman outpaced Tommy Milner’s sister Corvette by 0.021 seconds, leading the two Porsches of Gianmaria Bruni and Laurens Vanthoor.

AF Corse ended the session fifth and sixth with its pair of Ferrari 488 GTE Evos, driven by Miguel Molina and James Calado, respectively.

Question I have is both C8.Rs have been going balls to the walls for the last 3 days, can the C8.Rs though go another 24 hours with no issues, or were the cars used up over these 3 days ?

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#5675 - 06/09/22 03:48 PM Re: 24 Hours of LeMans - June 2022 [Re: teamzr1]  
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Nick Tandy led a 1-2 result for Corvette Racing in the Hyperpole session Thursday night ahead of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Tandy set a lap of 3:49.985 (132.538 mph) in the No. 64 Mobil 1/SiriusXM Chevrolet Corvette C8.R to give the team its first pole since 2010.

That also was the last time Corvette Racing started Le Mans with two cars on the front row. Antonio Garcia sealed the effort in the No. 63 Mobil 1/SiriusXM Corvette C8.R with a time of 3:50.177 (132.414 mph). It continued a solid pre-race program for the mid-engine Corvettes, which are at Le Mans for the second time.

Tandy, driving with FIA WEC full-season teammate Tommy Milner and Alexander Sims, claimed his first pole position at Le Mans. He was only 0.192 seconds clear of Garcia, who is driving with IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship teammate Jordan Taylor and Nicky Catsburg.

The two Corvettes have shown impressive form since Sunday’s Test Day with the full benefit of running the WEC with the N. 64 Corvette being realized. The next goal is add another 1-2 finish… this time Sunday afternoon for the team’s ninth class win and first since 2015.

Corvette Racing will contest the 24 Hours of Le Mans on June 11-12 with the green flag set for 4 p.m. CET and 10 a.m. ET. MotorTrend TV will air the race live with the MotorTrend Plus adding on-board footage. Live audio coverage will be available from Radio Le Mans.

NICK TANDY, NO. 64 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R GTE PRO HYPERPOLE WINNER:

“What a fantastic day and a fantastic car. It’s great to see so many Corvette flags around the track. This is for everyone who is here to support us and here to watch us. Hopefully we can keep these two yellow Corvettes up front for 24 hours. It was great out on track. The car feels fantastic.
These GTE cars are so much fun to drive when you’re out there with fresh tires and low fuel around this circuit it’s a real privilege.”

“The practices have been excellent. Corvette Racing knows how into and race these events. It’s been a long time since they’ve been on the top step at Le Mans.
The plan is always to keep it clean, keep it fast and have a great race. The ultimate thing though is still to end up still on the track and first on Sunday afternoon.”

ANTONIO GARCIA, NO. 63 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R SECOND IN GTE PRO HYPERPOLE:

“You can’t get much closer than that. It’s the first pole and first 1-2 for Corvette in quite a while.
They were good runs. It was pretty difficult to know what the track was going to be like.
This new format for qualifying here is just different for us. It’s the first time I did this, so I’m happy. I’m happy with how the car is running, for sure.

Yesterday we were up front, and we’re still up front now. It’s a nice place to start the race, for sure.”


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#5676 - 06/10/22 10:08 AM Re: 24 Hours of LeMans - June 2022 [Re: teamzr1]  
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Another C8.R takes a Le Mans speed record smile



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#5677 - 06/10/22 01:37 PM Re: 24 Hours of LeMans - June 2022 [Re: teamzr1]  
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All the testing, practice and qualifying sessions are in the rearview mirror. Now it’s time for Corvette Racing to take on the 24 Hours of Le Mans and go for a ninth victory in the great endurance race.

The two Mobil 1/SiriusXM Chevrolet Corvette C8.Rs will roll off first and second from the GTE Pro grid for the first time since 2010. Nick Tandy put the No. 64 Corvette on pole position in the class Thursday, followed closely by Antonio Garcia in the No. 63 C8.R.
With the race beckoning and final prep work being completed, all six Corvette Racing drivers took stock of the week with outlooks heading into Saturday’s green flag

ANTONIO GARCIA, NO. 63 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R:

“Now you need to put everything together… all the laps you’ve done. The last two hours of practice last night was the real warm-up of the race; that’s when you normally go and decide things about the car you will race. We have a good car, for sure. Now we have to see where the others are.”

The outlook and starting at the front: “I’m not nervous. I was way more nervous last year when we weren’t in Hyperpole and were behind seven Am cars. Last year, the pressure was up. The rain at the beginning helped as we were P2 after Lap One. But I prefer it this way!

We know how well the car is running. We can’t ask for a better starting point. This is the good thing about having two cars here. We have two shots in the race, and we need to capitalize on this. It would be great if we could keep it 1-2 all the way, but now there’s not much else we can do and nothing else we can ask for.”

JORDAN TAYLOR, NO. 63 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R:

“Every year, this race starts and it’s just a dogfight from start to finish. I’m excited to get things started because I know the car is quick and comfortable to drive. All the drivers in our car are happy with it. We’ll be in a good spot,
I think. For us, the name of the game is staying out of trouble, but at the same time you don’t want to lose too much time throughout. We have a good, competitive car. It feels stronger than it did last year when we finished second, so that makes things exciting.

Can you control a race this long from out front?
“The big thing with this race is that it’s always important to be at the front.
You never know when you’re going to get a slow zone or safety car that can separate the field. In America, you can drop back and hope for a yellow to get things back.

Here, you always try to maximize track position. Starting up front, you want to be up there in case one of those things happen. Looking at where we qualified, we definitely want to stay up there as long as possible to control things as much as we can and hope nothing out of our control takes that away.”

NICKY CATSBURG, NO. 63 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R:

“I was already more confident at the beginning of this week than last year.
Now, after my first days of driving, I’d say my confidence level is high. It all feels superb. I can feel the team is better prepared, and I can feel that the car is in a better window. But you can never be too comfortable. Let’s see what happens in the first few hours of the race, and then we will have a better picture of what’s going on.

So far, we can only focus on ourselves and I feel like what we are doing is good. The car is good. The team and drivers are well-prepared.
But it’s still a 24-hour race, and lots of crazy stuff can happen. Even when you have a car that is able and capable of winning, you still need to do it.
People sometimes underestimate that; they think that if you have an advantage, or you have the car to win, then just win it.
But it’s not like that. You still have to negotiate traffic and the race for 24 hours. Let’s see, but I’m confident.”

TOMMY MILNER, NO. 64 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R:

“To me, it feels like we are the best prepared we’ve ever been with a car that is the best I’ve ever had at Le Mans.
From that side of things, I’m excited about the race. Now, saying all that, there are years when we didn’t have the best preparation and won, and there are years when we had great preparation and didn’t get the win. We’ve done everything we needed going into this. Like Le Mans always is, the race is its own separate beast.
Having success will require using all the things we’ve learned so far, putting those to the test, not making mistakes and having a good, clean race. We’ve been fast in the practice sessions, but performance in the race is what matters.”

Preparation leading up to the race: “It’s easy to say that the WEC program has helped in the current state because we’ve had a good week.
There are a few areas where you could definitely say, ‘Yes, having done the WEC, we are better.’
Things like pit stops and having the chance to put those to the test at Sebring and Spa we saw there was room to improve there, and the team did a great job to figure out how to make them faster. That’s one area.

There’s a case to be made for a lot of other areas as well, but I hesitate to say that it’s necessary to do WEC to be successful here. In a lot of ways, things feel just like they always have. The attention to detail is the same, but nothing beats experience. In my view, the team is in a good place.
The crew guys are happy with where things are. It’s a good place to start from.”

NICK TANDY, NO. 64 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R:

“This year does feel different to last year. We’ve obviously taken a step forward with what we know about this car and this racetrack. But also the basic preparation of the team being in this WEC paddock with this Corvette and these regulations, there is a bit of pressure off. It’s not a new environment anymore. It’s a familiar environment.
We can really concentrate on the job. We have the experience of how to make the most out of the pitstops and with the way the sporting regulations work, which is different from how we normally choreograph pitstops. We have had it pre-organized and practiced.

Furthermore, we know what to do with heated tires these sorts of things with the WEC-specific tire compounds. It’s all these kinds of things that we’d normally experience for the first time. Now it’s in our pocket. You can see from the Test Day onward that it’s been much better preparation than in the past.”

Preparation leading up to the race: “I’m pretty sure we’re the team that has done the most laps and done the most quality running.
The race is still to come. Anything can happen. But looking at how the build-up has been the last week, we couldn’t ask for more.
With qualifying, both cars on the front row and having really good knowledge through practice about all the different conditions as we can experience.

There isn’t a great deal extra that we could have done as a team to prepare us. We have all the basics covered. Now we need to go into the race and perform and hope for a bit of luck. The drivers are ready. The car and the team are ready. Now let’s go out and win a 24-hour race.”

ALEXANDER SIMS, NO. 64 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R:

“The preparation has been superb. From the first moment I drove the car Sunday, I could tell there have been improvements in some places over last year. I would say the Corvette feels more hooked up in the Porsche Curves this year, for example.
Last year it was already pretty good, so it’s not like there were massive areas to improve, but that was one area where it feels a little more hooked up.

The running so far has gone very smoothly. We’ve got through a lot of test items and setup work to get to a point where we are pretty happy having optimized what we can. I’m looking forward to getting into it in the race, seeing how the pace develops into the night and into Sunday.”

Can you control a 24-hour race from the front: “With a relatively small field and a 24-hour race, it may make a little less of a difference than a longer race with a bigger field? But hopefully we can stay in front of at least a few stints.
There’s always a chance that a safety car comes out in the middle of the pack, and suddenly being at the front or the back makes a huge difference. You don’t rely on that scenario, but that can happen, and being in the front can only put you in a better situation. It’s always better to be at the front.”

Corvette Racing will contest the 24 Hours of Le Mans on June 11-12 with the green flag set for 4 p.m. CET and 10 a.m. ET. MotorTrend TV and MotorTrend
Plus will air the race live. Live audio coverage will be available from Radio Le Mans starting with Wednesday’s first official practice session.


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#5678 - 06/10/22 02:29 PM Re: 24 Hours of LeMans - June 2022 [Re: teamzr1]  
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Corvette Racing heads into its 22nd consecutive 24 Hours of Le Mans seeking its first win for the C8.R and the first since 2015. With the two cars in the hands of Tommy Milner, Nick Tandy and Alexander Sims (No. 64); and Antonio Garcia, Jordan Taylor and Nicky Catsburg (No. 63) starting one-two, Corvette has a good chance to achieve 24 Hours of Le Mans victories for all four generations of car it has taken to Le Mans.

Explore the history of Corvette Racing’s success in the American Le Mans Series and IMSA sports car championships in North America, and at Le Mans, across generations of cars and in different classes. Much of that success comes down to continuous improvement with each generation, General Motors and Pratt & Miller working together taking the lessons learned from one version of the racecar to apply to the next generation of road car to produce a better racecar. Win and repeat.

“The people working behind the program are the ones that really make this happen,” says Garcia. “So when you have GM and Pratt & Miller together, I think it proved to be an excellent combination. Pratt & Miller never stopped improving, and over the years, developing and using year by year the new tools available.

So if you look back to the very first Corvette to the very last one, I mean, all the resources put into each of them over the years have changed a lot.”
Pratt & Miller had a pretty good platform to work with in the C5, but it was far from ideal. Pop-up headlights and the cat-whisker air intakes weren’t what the car needed for success, especially at Le Mans.

“Corvette C5 was a Dave Hill-engineered project, which was the first proper technology, advanced materials and processing Corvette,” says Doug Fehan, the longtime Corvette Racing program manager who now serves in an ambassadorial role. “It was going to be a great car, because it was going to be completely different, clean sheet of paper, ground-up, everything-new kind of thing. And Herb [GM Racing head Herb Fishel] and I had developed a want and willingness to compete at Le Mans on the global stage with Corvette.”

Fehan, who first presented the idea of a racing program that would be much more than a win-on-Sunday, sell-on-Monday proposition in 1996, kept an office at Pratt & Miller, and credits the engineering expertise of Gary Pratt and the business sense of Jim Miller with much of the success of the program over the years. GM had previously worked with the company on the Intrepid GTP program, and Fehan describes the company in the early days as eight guys and a pickup truck.

Now known as Pratt Miller, the company was recently sold to Oshkosh Defense for $115 million. While defense projects will make up a large portion of the company’s work, Corvette Racing is still a key part of the business, and the company will develop the GT3 version of the C8 that will debut in 2024.

With the Intrepid experience in hand, Fehan though Pratt & Miller would be the ideal partners for developing Corvette into a world-beating race car.
But as good a car as the C5 was, and it was a big leap from the C4, Pratt & Miller still had its work cut out for it.

“We inherited a C5, the race team had no input into the design of the C5, it was done when we got it. And it was a great vehicle, but it had some real challenges in making it a racecar.
If you remember C5, you know it had those little cat whisker air intakes in the front grill, and it took in air from underneath the car. It made it really, really challenging to get enough combustion air into the engine, engine-cooling air and brake-cooling air utilizing that body design,” Fehan explains.

Despite that, the team achieved three wins at Le Mans with the car.
Corvette engineer Dave Hill then listened to what the race team had to say about that car, and Fehan notes that Hill thought he could use what was learned in racing to make a better road car, that in turn would be a better race car.
“When C6 was on the pad, which was about the time that we started racing, Corvette Chief Engineer Dave Hill, says, ‘Well, what do you need?’
I said I need a big, single air intake. I need the windshield tipped back as far as you can tip it back.
I need headlights that don’t flip up I need flush mount headlights, which was heresy. He gave us that.”

The flush headlights were a bigger deal than might be imagined. From C2 through C5, Corvette had always had some kind of flip-out or flip-up headlights. But with HID lighting coming, which required transformers and a bunch of other stuff to work, the time was right to do away with that.

C6 was an immediate success, giving Corvette its second and third 24 Hours of Le Mans victory in a row, with four victories overall, and four more consecutive American Le Mans Series championships. The partnership in evolving the Corvette between race team and production team continued.

“C7 had what we call the waterfall hood. Radiators in cars were always straight up and down, which was kind of made it a problem to get the air funneled through. You wanted that radiator canted forward and in C7 we were able to get that radiator canted forward and create that smooth air flow up through that radiator then out through the top of the hood. That was a direct derivative from racing,” Fehan says.

“And then all the stuff that you don’t see the components, the materials, the lightweight bodywork. All those things that we were developing in racing, were being looked at by the production design team. Getting the bottom of the car perfectly flat and smooth, to get the air to move out from underneath it more rapidly, they were learning that in racing.
Pratt & Miller was doing a lot of the computational fluid dynamics on the racecar, and they ended up helping GM do some CFD work on the Corvette bodywork. And that gave us the C7 (main image) which was a pretty kick-ass racecar and a tremendous road car.”

During all this, Tadge Juechter was observing. Not yet the man in charge, he had seen the trials and tribulations as Corvette evolved. But he would be tasked with overseeing perhaps the biggest evolution in the car’s history, the transition from front-mid engine to having the LT2 engine behind the driver. And there is a valid argument to be made that without Corvette Racing’s years of success when the green light was given, that C8 doesn’t exist in its current form.

“Tadge knew that this was going to be a pretty tall mountain to climb, because his goal was that, for the first time, we were actually going to work hand in glove, the race car design guys and the production team guys, were going to work together to design and build this C8.

And we were going to do it at a level heretofore unknown, really by anybody, any manufacturer. Tadge was committed, and he was a just a pitbull, getting stuff done that we needed to have happened. And the results are pretty stunning,” notes Fehan, his enthusiasm for the results clear in his voice.

“Tadge was a guy who was damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. He was going to get this done, and he championed that thing. That’s why the car is just as good as it is. That, for me, from that 1996 presentation, is the car that embodies every single thing I would have ever dreamed or envisioned what a race program could do. It’s really the final distillation of 25 years of tremendous effort on everybody’s part,” sums up Fehan.

For the 2022 season, Corvette is splitting its efforts, running a modified version of the C8.R in GTD Pro in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and the C8.R GTE car in the full World Endurance Championship.
Both programs came together at Daytona, and are together again for the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Sunday will reveal whether the final version of the GTE car is victorious at Circuit de la Sarthe, and the C8 can count a Le Mans win on its resume, before the GT3 era begins.


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