CORVETTE RACING AT ROAD ATLANTA: What Might Have Been

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Fifth-place GTD PRO finish for Garcia, Taylor, Catsburg in No. 3 Corvette
C8.R


CORVETTE RACING AT ROAD ATLANTA: What Might Have Been
Fifth-place GTD PRO finish for Garcia, Taylor, Catsburg in No. 3 Corvette
C8.R


BRASELTON, Ga. (Oct. 1, 2022) – Corvette Racing closed its season in the
IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship on Saturday with a fifth-place
finish in the GT Daytona (GTD) PRO class after the 10-hour Petit Le Mans at
Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.


Antonio Garcia, Jordan Taylor and Nicky Catsburg entered Saturday hoping to
replicate their victory from earlier this year at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours
of Sebring. Ultimately, two separate incidents of contact didn’t help the
No. 3 Mobil 1/SiriusXM Chevrolet Corvette C8.R’s quest for its second
victory of the season.


The result was enough for Garcia and Taylor to take third in the GTD Drivers
Championship and Chevrolet to finish third in the final Manufacturers
standings.


The day began strong with Garcia moving forward from the green flag. He
picked up two positions to third on the opening two laps of the race and
moved to the lead just past the hour mark. He drove the first 92 minutes
before handing off to Taylor, who ran first or second for the first 90
minutes of his time in the Corvette.


The day’s first setback came near the three-hour mark when Taylor’s
right-rear Michelin went down while leading on a restart following contact
with the No. 9 Porsche. He was able to dive directly into the pits for four
fresh tires but fell down to sixth.


The march back toward the front came over the next two hours as two more
full-course yellows and penalties to some of its competitors allowed the
Corvette to make up track position. By the time Catsburg took over near the
four-and-a-half-hour mark, the No. 3 was back with the lead back in GTD PRO
and ran as high as second before Garcia returned to the driver’s seat near
the seven-hour mark.


Things came undone for the No. 3 Corvette with a little more than two hours
to go as Garcia spun at Turn 11 after contact with the 62 Ferrari. He
dropped from third to fifth and then down to sixth as Corvette Racing
engineers immediately went on an alternate pit strategy in hopes of a yellow
to get the C8.R back into contention.


The race’s final yellow came with 52 minutes remaining and brought Garcia to
within five seconds of the lead inside the final 30 minutes but couldn’t
draw closer at the end.


Corvette Racing closes its 2022 program with the Eight Hours of Bahrain and
the final race of the FIA World Endurance Championship on Nov. 10-12.


ANTONIO GARCIA, NO. 3 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R – FINISHED
FIFTH IN GTD PRO: “It’s difficult when you have GTD cars fighting for the
same thing as you and their performance is completely opposite of yours. It’s
impossible to race when one car achieves a lap time in one way and the rest
do it another. I must say it’s the story of the season. We showed at the
beginning of the race that if we are up front and can do our own pace, we’re
good and we can race. As soon as you have someone in front of you that you
can’t pass and another car gets to you, they will go past because you have
nothing to help you defend. That’s been the thing this year. Frustrating
day, frustrating season… but the effort from everyone at Corvette Racing has
been great all season. We couldn’t ask for more from the team. That’s 110
percent.”

On the start: “The start of the race was easy and relaxed in a way. We had
good pace to the other cars in front of those and managed to jump most of
those in the pits. Then the pace was really good. I had to catch the 79,
which seemed doable and got into the lead. But one more year where I’ve won
many stints at Petit Le Mans but never the whole race.”


JORDAN TAYLOR, NO. 3 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R – FINISHED
FIFTH IN GTD PRO: “I feel like we put ourselves in some good spots today. At
the end of it, we just didn’t have the pace to battle guys. After that last
restart we were kind of in a position to fight again but got motored by.
That was pretty much our season in one race. Hopefully we can go into the
offseason, figure out what all we learned and come back stronger next year.”

Opening stint: "Our car was decent. We had a little bit of contact, which
was unfortunate. It kind of cycled us to the back but we were still in a
good position. It's really hard to pass around here with the traffic. I
wasn't going to give the position (to the 9 Porsche). I was trying to be
aggressive and hold him off. We were racing for the Endurance Cup so I think
that's why we were racing that aggressively that early on.”


NICKY CATSBURG, NO. 3 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R – FINISHED
FIFTH IN GTD PRO: “It was a tough race. We didn’t have the pace at the end.
It seems like everyone else had something left and we didn’t. I had fun but
unfortunately this was the maximum we could do.

"Honestly there wasn't a lot of crazy action. It was quite fun.
Unfortunately on both pit entries, I got held up by a couple of stints and
lost some time. But that didn't mean so much for our pace. It just means
that all the effort you put in during the stint is then lost for no reason,
which is very annoying.”