The 102nd running of the crown jewel of international endurance racing is in the books. The 2025 24 Hours of Le Mans brought its fair share of challenges for Corvette Racing, but the Bow Tie Brand crossed the finish line with three top-10 class results – and a podium finish to cap it off.
Of the three Vette entries that took to Circuit de la Sarthe on June 14th, 2025, the No. 81 Corvette Z06 GT3.R earned the best finish in the LMGT3 class. Charlie Eastwood, Rui Andrade and Tom Van Rompuy tag-teamed the race car, pulling off a P3 finish in-class when the clock ran out. The team fought back from a drive-through penalty in the seventh hour of the event, forcing the TF Sport-fielded team to recover some time. Thankfully, that was the only hiccup, and the No. 81 Vette team drove a flawless race from there.
“Amazing result. A podium at Le Mans and my first podium this season with Corvette. Not a bad place for it,” Eastwood said. “As it has been for so many races last year and this year, not one thing went wrong. Every pit stop was perfect, not a single scratch on the car for 24 hours. We didn’t have the pace but we ended up on the podium because of that.”
The No. 33 Corvette Racing machine – driven by Daniel Juncadella, Jonny Edgar and Ben Keating – recovered from a disappointing qualifying result and a mechanical issue early in the race. While the mechanical problem cost the trio two laps, they were undeterred, recovering to seventh place by the end of the race.
“It was an excellent, excellent race after the issues we had where we lost two laps,” Juncadella said. “We finished two laps behind the leaders so that says a lot about where we could have been. It’s great to see the sister car in third.”
The No. 13 Corvette Z06 GT3.R, fielded by AWA Racing and driven by Matt Bell, Orey Fidani and Lars Kern, rounded out the top 10 in the LMGT3 class. The team ran as high as sixth place, and 10th is nothing to sneeze at, considering it was the first time Fidani and Kern had attempted a 24-hour race.
“Having all three of our Corvettes finish in the top-10 of the 24 Hours of Le Mans is an incredible accomplishment of which everyone involved can be proud,” said Jessica Dane, Corvette Racing Program Manager. “A massive thank you to our partner teams TF Sport and AWA for believing in this program and their collaborative efforts surrounding this race.”
She added, “Everyone at Corvette Racing is proud of the way both teams performed and carried themselves through testing, practice, qualifying and the race. Thanks to everyone at GM Motorsports, Pratt Miller and Bosch for their collaboration. Most of all, congratulations to the drivers, team management, the crews, the engineers and everyone who contributed to this fantastic result.”
Improvements for the current gen’s third model year.
Scheduled to begin production in 2027.
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So.... what place on the podium did Corvette end up on?
The aforementioned article states "P3 finish."
If Corvette is going to command those prices for its new C8, they are going to need to do better on the track. No one wants to pay that price for a car that can't get a podium at Le Mans.
Very uninformed comment. The C8 just posted a third place podium finish at LeMans, and the regular production Z06 and even the ZR1 are many tens of thousands of dollars less expensive than the cars that were competing against it.
A little off topic, but I predict a Nurburing time of six minutes 17 seconds for the ZR1 or ZORA that’s why the cryptic release on June 17.
I hope that they post a fast time but 6:17 is impossible a production car. The Mercedes-AMG One which is laughingly called a "production car" did it in 6:29. The fastest car that is close to being unmodified is the Porsche 911 GT2 RS (with the Manthey Performance Kit) which did about 6:39.
Spelling error Nurburgring.
They should make it easier to spell for americans. I get it wrong constantly and when saying it just mumble it all together like Ner-Berg-Er. or Nerg-Berg-Ing. LOL .
Awesome results for Corvette Racing. I'm looking forward to more podium finishes.
The competition is overwhelming at times. Corvette continues to fight hard but needs something to gain a win. Getting a podium finish or just finishing the race at Le Mans is a giant feat.
The Balance or Performance allowances were to restrictive on the Corvette this year. Ferrari got the "sweet deal" in Hypercar and Porsche got the nod in GT3. The Europeans like to make sure that their cars win! 😡
Yep, but it's happening in IMSA too, as usual with Porsche.
With the unbelievable performance of modern day sports cars, it’s too bad that sanctioning racing bodies make it where a race car is just not a street car with added safety and fire suppression systems.
Next year .... in the middle of the podium !
I was watching 2025 24 hour Lemans on MAX, Terrible coverage for GT3 class. The Purple Porsche was near last place much of race... then there was a wreck and safety car out on course.. Corvette who went in to pits .. all of a sudden Porsche is in 1st place?
he reversed the field.. how did this happen ?
Here is what we are dealing with. Last year was a new car. It looks the same but it is very different.
Second the team running Le Mans is not Pratt and Miller. It is TF racing. This is a new team to Corvette and they have much to learn on the car. Yes P and M is helping but on race day strategy and other things come into play that they will need to learn. even being in this class things change with each car.
The class is very competitive. and if not for the one penalty Corvette could have won. You need to be near perfect to win a race like this. After a drive through penalty a Podium is very good.
BOP is pretty even right now. But it bounces around.
The real key this years is we are seeing few mechanical issues vs last year. They may have been small but they hurt. That appears to be fixed now.
Finally they have new tires this year and all the teams set ups had to change and it looks like TF adapted well.
Changing from a C5R-C7R was not tough as much of the car was the same. The C8 took time to learn more so than the other cars and the teams are doing well this early in.
If they had come out and dominated the races they would have gotten smacked with more weight. That is another thing.