cor123

CORVETTE RACING AT LE MANS: Corvette C7.R Fights for Podium

Taylor racing toward third-place; No. 74 Corvette fighting back



LE MANS, France (June 15, 2014) – With six hours left to go, Corvette Racing’s No. 73 Chevrolet Corvette C7.R continued to fight for a podium position in the GTE Pro class during its debut at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Antonio Garcia ran fourth as he tried to chase down the third-place Porsche with both cars on the same lap after 18 hours.



The Spaniard was 68 seconds from third place in the car he shares with Jan Magnussen and Jordan Taylor. The first daylight hours Sunday saw the trio fighting back after losing laps to a faulty valve stem for the car’s air jack and twice being separated from its competitors by a safety car in the race’s opening 12 hours.



Richard Westbrook was fifth in class driving the No. 74 Corvette C7.R. The car had been running in podium contention as well before losing eight laps due to a slipped alternator belt and gearbox leak. Oliver Gavin, driving with Westbrook and Tommy Milner, had reported a low voltage reading and a burning smell inside the car near the halfway point. Upon further examination, the crew found the alternator belt covered oil.



The next Corvette Racing update from Le Mans will be the final race recap at 3 p.m. CT/9a.m. ET.



JAN MAGNUSSEN, NO. 73 CHEVROLET CORVETTE C7.R

“It’s going quite well, actually. We’ve got good speed in the car, handling is perfect and we’re going as fast as we can. We’re a lap behind the Porsche in third position, so it will be impossible to catch them on the track, but we’re trying. You never know what happens next. After all, this is Le Mans.”



OLIVER GAVIN, NO. 74 CHEVROLET CORVETTE C7.R

“It was quite tough. We lost telemetry. We had to change brakes; Richard was struggling with that. We thought we had fixed the telemetry but that didn’t work. We were trying to monitor the tire pressures, and that didn’t work. I thought I had a tire going down; the car was oversteering massively to the right and it was locking up the left-front. I think it was a symptom of the pressures being cold because we didn’t have a way to measure them with no telemetry. They couldn’t tell me what happened. The tire was low but it wasn’t going down. Then we had a belt come off the alternator and we may have a small gearbox leak. There are a lots of little things that just haven’t run with us over the last few hours. There is still long way to go so we can’t think it’s all over. But the car is quiet edgy to drive. Richard, Tommy and myself will try our hard to keep pushing and pushing. Everyone on the team is motivated but our backs are against the wall.”



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update! #73 Jordan Taylor now 3rd and closing in on 2nd place behind the #92 Porsche

ZR1 136

Thanks for posting all these updates Some of us have to work on weekends but still have access to some website...but not all of them. Go Corvette Racing


Just remember everything on your barely street legal Corvette came for racing Corvettes and from comments from Corvette forum members

cor123

Hope you all are watching now! Antonio Garcia just took 2nd place!

ZR1 136

Nope not watching the fox sports not working at the job site. Keep the updates coming. Go Corvettes Go

Lavender

looks like 2nd and 4th for Corvette Racing

quick04Z06

2d and 4th is good but this team needed to win. Frankly GM needs to quit needlessly recalling cars, step up to P 1 (and keep running GT Pro) and win in this new hybrid class. GM is just a follower now. Sounds like Ferrari and Nissan will be in P 1 next year. GM and Ford, too, should be in this to showcase their hybrid engineering,

sdurg24

So I'm watching FOX and just when #73 is pressing the coverage switches from FOX 1 to FOX 2. I don't get FOX 2. Does anyone care at FOX? This is no way to run a railroad or cover a race as important as LeMans

Coc5

Well Nascar is important since they have "43 of the World's Greatest Drivers"!
Fox sucks!
Did anyone see the spin out on the 74 I think, it was last night. They did a driver change and a few turns later, they looped it.

ZR1 136

2nd and 4th in class LMGTE Pro 14th and 18th overall

13 51 LMGTE Pro Gianmaria BRUNI, Toni VILANDER, Giancarlo FISICHELLA Ferrari 458 Italia

14 73 LMGTE Pro Jan MAGNUSSEN, Antonio GARCIA, Jordan TAYLOR Chevrolet Corvette - C7

15 92 LMGTE Pro Marco HOLZER, Frédéric MAKOWIECKI, Richard LIETZ Porsche 911 RSR

18 74 LMGTE Pro Oliver GAVIN, Tommy MILNER, Richard WESTBROOK Chevrolet Corvette - C7

31 79 LMGTE Pro Cooper MacNEIL, Jeroen BLEEKEMOLEN, Porsche 911 GT3 RSR

33 97 LMGTE Pro Darren TURNER, Stefan MÜCKE, Bruno SENNA Aston Martin Vantage V8

34 91 LMGTE Pro Patrick PILET, Jörg BERGMEISTER, Nick TANDY Porsche 911 RSR

43 52 LMGTE Pro Matt GRIFFIN, Alvaro PARENTE, Federico LEO Ferrari 458 Italia

50 71 LMGTE Pro Davide RIGON, Pierre KAFFER, Olivier BERETTA Ferrari 458 Italia

F4Gary

They got caught behind the second safety car 3 times and had to pit and change a door because the officials said the lights weren't bright enough.

rfn026

Keep in mind that the Corvette teams spends more money at this one race than it takes to run a NASCAR team for an entire season.

Richard Newton
The Technical Stuff

Bill Dearborn

After something like 13 years Fox still hasn't figured out how to cover any race. In every race (NASCAR, Sports Car or what ever) the directors change camera shots at all of the wrong times, choose poor locations for cameras. On top of that they ruined Speed Channel by boring even the NASCAR fans with excessive NASCAR coverage. Now they want to ruin coverage on their new channels by switching coverage of one of the most important races in the world from one channel to another in order to show 2 day old NASCAR footage that nobody will watch or a Truck race that nobody watches (nobody in the stands and nobody in front of the screen).

Bill

ZR1 136

Big companies love to **** people off free advertisement gets everyone talking about it. Politicians do the same thing. Its a damn conspiracy.

RX-Ben

Do you think the Corvette team spends any more than the Aston or AF Corse teams?

jcsperson

Yes.

c5_4_me

Richard Newton, I followed your link and I like your blog.

Do you have a source for this statement?

"the Corvette teams spends more money at this one race than it takes to run a NASCAR team for an entire season."

I am skeptical. Hendrick Motor Sports, et al have serious budgets. I am sure the Le Mans effort is expensive, but more than the entire 36 race NASCAR season? Maybe the marketing etc adds up, but NASCAR is no grassroots effort nowadays.

cor123

I do know that GM scaled back all support to it's motorsports projects including Nascar. Corvette Racing was the only one not touched, according to Doug Fehan.

c5_4_me

Yes, I can understand that GM/Chevrolet might not spend as much on NASCAR as Le Mans, but Richard said:
"more money at this one race than it takes to run a NASCAR team for an entire season."

So, I understand that he is saying total $ versus total $, regardless of whose $ it is.

Gary2KC5

Me too...10 years ago a primary Nascar sponsorship cost 95 million/ 5 years....so conservatively it costs 150 now or 30 mil/year. I don't know what it cost to run NASCAR but let just say sponsorship $'s cover the cost.

So what your saying is that GM is throwing 25-30 mil at LeMans?

dvandentop

any roundball figures? i think i recall hearing 8 million or so at one point?