Corvette Racing Endures Tough Day At Indianapolis 2023
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The Brickyard was not kind to Corvette Racing on September 17th, 2023, as The Bow Tie team only had a fifth-place result to show for its efforts at the end of the day.
After qualifying with the fifth-quickest time, Jordan Taylor wheeled the No. 3 Corvette Racing C8.R into fourth place before the field was slowed by a caution. Then, Taylor took advantage of a penalty to the leader, bumping the C8.R to third place right out of the gate. After pacing the leaders, Taylor wheeled into the pits before swapping with Antonio Garcia.
Garcia took control and unable to fend off charges from traffic behind him. Eventually, he brought the race car back to the attention of the crew with an hour left in the race, exiting Pit Road behind several formidable competitors, including the eventual race-winning Mercedes and the runner-up Aston Martin. Unfortunately, the No. 3 C8.R simply didn’t have the speed to pace the leaders, and fell back, crossing the line in fifth place when it was all said and done.
“A frustrating day,” said Garcia after the race. “We had a little bit of track position before the first stop thanks to the slow traffic and Jordan [Taylor] being able to save fuel. Once we went back to green and no one was holding us up, there was no chance to stay with the leaders.”
He added, “The only way for us to create laptime was no traffic and momentum. The others could go whenever they wanted while we struggled to stay up to speed getting through the traffic. And there was a lot of that. Even the GTDs had a pretty easy time getting by. The car was fine and ran well. We just couldn’t fight. I hope that gets better at Road Atlanta.”
Taylor echoed his teammate’s sentiments, saying, “The car was decent. Like Antonio said, we had no power to race with anyone. It was wild out there. You could gain and lose a second or two a lap depending on when they get you and how aggressive they are.”
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Hard to win when the sanctioning body is always trying to slow you down !
IMSA’s “Balance of Performance” devil strikes again.
Road Atlanta is a notorious horsepower track so unless there is a big change in the BOP from on-high at IMSA, the Vette will be another also-ran there too and I’m sure the team is very aware of it.
Kind of odd that even the GTD class cars were passing with ease and it was very, very noticeable on TV. Also, the IMSA officials seem to be highly favoring the front-engined competitors with horsepower advantages all year long.
The driver ratings are the only difference between GTD & GTD Pro. Machinery is the same.
So ? Driver expertise and experience should provide better lap times for the Pro division and does so for all the other cars except the Vette. Your reply and reasoning are irrelevant at best and silly at worst.
You might want to check out the BoP specs for each car, you might be surprised. This year is a little bit of apples and oranges as the C8 is essentially a legacy car. Next year it will be a “by the rules” GT3 car so it will be interesting to see if they are a little freer with the BoP restrictions.
A great car for the street and a great value.
But if you have unlimited money, plenty of
cars are faster, or quicker.
As much as I love my C8. I would take
a few other cars if I could.
But it really will take some more engineering to
get quick, as stated in the article.