The #3 Pratt Miller Corvette celebrated a dominant victory in the shadow of GM’s old headquarters here in Detroit on Saturday evening. On home soil, the Chevrolet squad handily converted pole position into victory, leading all but three laps in the 79-lap race, completing a sweep of class wins for GM, led by the #31 Cadillac in GTP.
After heading both free practice sessions on Friday and qualifying on the front row for the race, it looked like the Corvettes’ race to lose for the first time at its home track since it took an ALMS GT1 class victory at Belle Isle in 2008 in the Chevrolet Corvette C6.R.
Alexander Sims and Antonio Garcia missed out on victory last year, finishing 1.6 seconds behind the #64 Ford Multimatic Motorsports car of Mike Rockenfeller and Sebastian Priaulx after qualifying ninth and cutting through the field by the halfway point of the race.
While they had the dominant pace this weekend, the 100-minute race was not smooth sailing. The latter half, in particular, was chaotic, but the commanding lead that Sims and Garcia carried through the first and second stints sent a clear message.
Sims started the race for the team, executing a clean start and putting a lot of road between the back of his #3 Corvette and the following #14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus. Sims was consistently lapping quicker than the rest of the field, sitting over five seconds ahead of the Lexus half an hour into the race.
“We were able to maintain position after the first corner, and our Corvette was working really, really well. Tyres switched on nicely, and I was able to sensibly pull out a pretty good gap even with one restart,” Sims commented in the post-race winners’ press conference.
Four minutes into the race, a large piece of debris on the racing line brought the race under yellow flags, bunching the field back up and negating the advantage Sims had after his great start. Barnicoat in the #14 Lexus had a second chance to take the lead but ultimately didn’t have an answer for the Corvette’s speed on the restart, as Sims powered down the road.
“[The caution] also reduced the number of times the GTPs came past me by having that yellow. So, for me, I did not have much to do other than put in fast laps.”
“Once we got into the pit stops and came back out, we were still in a very strong position, but with cars on different strategies, and then the GTP traffic, and the restarts at the end, it was mad to watch.”
At the thirty-minute mark, Sims brought the #3 in for a planned pit stop after going longer than the majority of the field, taking fuel and handing the car over to Antonio Garcia to lock in a victory for Corvette, something he has done 32 times in the series, tied for 18th most victories alongside the likes of Ricky Taylor, Alan McNish and Sascha Maassen.
“We are strong here every time. We show speed, but we couldn’t really finish it and be where we had to be [in past years]. Very grateful that Alex had a clean run and actually managed to pull a nice gap, so even the pit stop became a little bit less stressful,” said Garcia.
“Everything was good up until we caught the lapped cars. They were all on different strategies and significantly slower, defending a lot to not lose a lap.”
Garcia had to manoeuvre around the #64 Ford Racing, the #59 RLL McLaren, and, most notably, a stubborn Nick Tandy in the #77 AO Racing Porsche early in his stint. Desperate to hold onto the lead lap due to the track’s typically yellow-heavy nature, the runners at the rear were fighting for the opportunity to be brought back into play with a well-timed caution.
This meant Garcia put a lot of unnecessary stress on the set of Michelin tyres, which they ran for the duration of the race, simply to maintain his lead and stay far out in front of Jack Hawksworth’s Lexus and Nicky Catsburg in the sister #4 Corvette.
“They were fighting, I had to maintain the gap [to cars behind], and at the same time also save tyres. It was very stressful, especially after the second-to-last restart.”
Garcia had cleared the lapped traffic and settled into a rhythm, sitting six seconds up the road when debris from the #6 Porsche Penske Motorsport caused a caution with 20 minutes remaining.
With 12 minutes to go, the race went green for less than a minute before the #77 Porsche wedged into the barrier in Turn 5, throwing a FCY just as things were heating up between Garcia and Hawksworth.
The timing of the caution was troublesome, as Garcia reacted immediately and ended up with the neon-yellow Lexus making contact with his bumper and passing him under yellow-flag conditions. The lead would be returned to #3, and the #14 would receive a drive-through penalty for incident responsibility.
“I saw the yellow flags in my dash, but he probably was super close to me and maybe didn’t know that it was yellow, so he just rammed me, basically. I didn’t know how the car would behave after pretty heavy contact,” the Spaniard explained.
The final restart bred a slurry of contact and chaos in Garcia’s rear-view mirror, including the sister #4 car colliding heavily with the #15 Lexus and all of the top 5 runners in GTD Pro being shuffled with three minutes remaining.
“It was a bit of a Mario Kart scene in my rear-view camera!” He joked.
In the end, the #3 was able to keep out of harm’s way and cruise to the top step of the podium, speeding up the road to build a 1.9-second gap, sealing a monumental result for the GM brand. It also closed the gap in the GTD Pro standings between the two Corvettes. The sister #4 car still leads, but the gap to the #3 – in fourth – has shrunk to 31 points with six races remaining.
“We finally made it, so very happy for Chevrolet and Corvette and all the Corvette fans that felt that we were the team to support!” said Sims.
Next time we see the GTD Pro class in action will be at the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen, June 25-28.
Images © Jack Webster / Dailysportscar.com
