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|  | | July 14 2015 03:39:51 PM EST | |
| Corvette has had a 73% winning record at Mosport (Canadian Tire Motorsports Park) over the past 15 years. This year the #3 Corvette comes to Mosport tied for the lead in the championship points with the #25 BMW.
The #3 Corvette qualified P5 and the #4 Corvette was P7. The #4 team elected to change all four tires for the start of the race, pushing them to the back of the grid, P8. Both teams claim they missed the setup in qualifying, but from 1st to last in GTLM was only covered by 0.7 seconds.
Race day was another tough fight from the back. Both Corvette were quick, but so was the competition. The GTLM freight train did lap after lap after lap nose to tail, with only the top two leaders occasionally pulling a gap on the rest. The combination of high speeds and equal performance made passing very challenging for anyone.
The #3 had to push hard to make a pass on the #25 BMW (tied in the points), in the last laps of the race to manage a podium finish. This puts the #3 Corvette back into the points lead by 2 points going into Road America. The #3 also managed the quickest GTLM race lap at 1:15.340.
The #4 managed to push from 8th to 5th in a good effort given the circumstances.
This race really shows the level of competition in the IMSA GTLM class, and really shows how important qualifying can be despite how small the margins are.
ANTONIO GARCIA:
"When you have that kind of spread of only three or four tenths from first to eighth at this track, you can't really pass. It was like a train of GTs all around and nobody could slipstream because everyone was pulled by each other. I couldn't really go much faster and I decided to start saving fuel at the end of my first stint. So I think that saved us a lot which enabled us to run four or five laps at the end by myself, and that combined with a good last pit stop gave us an opportunity. If I might have been a second ahead I might have been able to go on to get second place. But third position with what wasn't the best pace we've had this year is a positive result. We just need to focus a little bit more with track position with our Corvette. For sure qualifying is definitely important, especially on this kind of track. If the championship comes down to tracks like Road Atlanta, even if it's a nine-hour race, we definitely need to be up front because then things are much easier."
JAN MAGNUSSEN:
"For sure. I think the BMW ran out of tires at the end there. Antonio did a good job taking care of his. So with two laps to go, Antonio had a chance and he took it. It was fantastic. It puts us back in the points lead. We're very, very happy. It didn't look like that was going to happen at the beginning of the race. It was so difficult pass here. Track position was so important. I felt like in most areas we had an advantage over the other cars. But when you're in traffic and in the draft and you don't have the downforce when you're stuck behind the guys in front of you, it makes it really difficult. To come away here in third place is a fantastic result. It was really a great job by the whole Corvette Racing team."
OLIVER GAVIN:
"There was always traffic in front of us, around us and passing us. It was a matter of managing the car and staying out of trouble. Our Corvette was pretty loose. It wasn't that comfortable to drive and we had a bit of downshift problem. There was some kind of emergency mode the car went into, but we figured that out with Tommy in the car. I was able to sneak by one of the Porsches after he was hit by the DeltaWing, but he was able to get by me when I had one of the issues downshifting. It's a tough day. We didn't have the ultimate pace to race the guys up front. So it was all about maximizing the points we could get today."
TOMMY MILNER:
"We've seen here in the past where it's hard to pass. You can get stuck behind some guys who aren't that much slower than you are, but every tenth counts in our class. In the end, I'm happy with how the race went. I would have loved to have gotten another podium, but I'm proud of how we kept fighting and got our Corvette better for the end. Antonio and I were kind of pushing our way trying to get those BMWs. It's tough here. Passing is not easy for anybody and it's frustrating. I certainly can see that toward the end, I lost quite a bit of time. All in all, our Corvette was good. It was fast. It's just one of those races that now you can look back and go, 'man if we had run a little bit better, we would have been ahead of some of those guys.'' So we'll just use that for more motivation going forward and try to qualify as high as we possibly can."
DOUG FEHAN:
"It was a very interesting race today. Into the program, we simply didn't have the speed to compete at the front. What we did was make up for it with great fuel strategy, tremendous pit stops and at the end had adjusted tire pressures so we could run faster laps. You race till the end, and today Jan and Antonio were beneficiaries of the Corvette Racing mantra, 'Never give up.'"
VIDEO: Qualifying Broadcast
VIDEO: Race Broadcast
-NOTE: The chassis that was damaged at Le Mans has been repaired and will be back racing at the next round at Road America on July 25th. The Larbre Competition car will be shipped back to the team this week. The next round of the FIA WEC is the Nurburgring 6hr on August 30th. |
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