Corvette Racing’s pair of Chevrolet Corvettes both finished on the class podium Sunday at the Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. It marked the team’s first double podium of the season and allowed both Corvette C7.Rs to gain positions in the GT Le Mans (GTLM) points standings of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
Antonio Garcia and Jan Magnussen placed second in the No. 3 Mobil 1/SiriusXM Chevrolet Corvette C7.R, just ahead of Oliver Gavin and Tommy Milner in the No. 4 Mobil 1/SiriusXM Corvette. The results vaulted Garcia and Magnussen to second place in the GTLM Driver’s Championship while Gavin and Milner are now tied for fourth.
Chevrolet also moved up a spot in the Manufacturer standings to second after six rounds.
The race featured six caution periods that allowed for a variety of pit stop strategies. In the end, the No. 3 Corvette finished a spot higher than where it started, and the No. 4 C7.R improved two positions.
Magnussen qualified third but took second on the start from Ryan Briscoe and Gavin held position in fifth. Both Corvettes stopped 21 minutes in during the first yellow flag period for fuel and tires. Garcia and Milner took over an hour later, with the Corvettes running first and third just before the GTLM contenders began to make their last stops.
Garcia came in with 55 minutes left to follow the No. 911 Porsche, which had been running second. Meanwhile, the No. 4 Corvette Racing team elected to keep Milner on track for another 20 minutes. After a string of impressive laps where he was on pace of the cars that had fresher Michelin tires, Milner came in from the lead with 35 minutes with only one other GTLM car electing to stay out.
Unfortunately for the Corvettes, their lead challenger made its last stop just as the fifth caution period came out which kept the C7.Rs third and fourth when the race resumed with 20 minutes left. The top five cars were nose-to-tail as Garcia and Milner moved up to second and third, respectively, but the final caution period with 13 minutes remaining stymied any chances for either car to challenge for the win.
The next event for Corvette Racing is the Northeast Grand Prix on July 20-21 from Lime Rock Park.
ANTONIO GARCIA, NO. 3 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C7.R – SECOND IN GTLM: “When you know you are running up front and are in the a good spot… you need to do the normal strategy. When the Porsche dove in, we had to follow them. It’s easy to say now that if we had stayed out and run deep in the stint, we would have been able to get a win. But the 67 was the one that pitted right before that yellow. I was focused on saving my tires toward the end to get around the Porsche just in case there was a yellow. We got one, but the down side of it was that the 67 was ahead of us. But the strategy worked as I had better tires than the Porsche and could get by them on the last run.”
JAN MAGNUSSEN, NO. 3 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C7.R – SECOND IN GTLM: “It was a tough race. I think our car was pretty good. We had some amazing pit stops again from the guys. Just with the way that the last safety car and how the Ford made it in and out without really taking a loss made it really difficult for us and not realistically a chance for us to come back. So, second and third is probably the best we could have hoped for in this situation. On to the next one and see if we can get one better.”
OLIVER GAVIN, NO. 4 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C7.R – THIRD IN GTLM: “You’ve got to say that it’s been a good points day for Corvette Racing. The team performed exceptionally well as always. Great execution in the pit stops and Tommy (Milner) did a great job at the end there. He was very, very fast and just didn’t get the rub of things you know just didn’t quite get the luck in the traffic and then also, the No. 67 definitely got some fortune when they could come into the pit lane under that caution at the end there. You know I think we really had a genuine chance to fight them today, but it wasn’t to be so we have to sort of gather ourselves up and move on to Lime Rock. But good points, pleased for the guys, really solid strong event here for us, but we didn’t manage to get that victory that we are really wanting. But we will move on to Lime Rock and see where we go from there.”
TOMMY MILNER, NO. 4 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C7.R – THIRD IN GTLM: “Being by myself for a little bit there in that first stint, it was hard to know kind of what is going on with the pace and things like that. I had good information from our engineer Reed (Sullivan) to let me know that I was on a good pace basically. We had a really good strategy there for the end. We had a really fast car at the end, and ultimately second and third for the team is good.”
Source. Corvette Racing
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