Garcia to start third in GTD PRO, Varrone paces AWA in debut of Corvette Z06 GT3.R

The new Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R will make its first race start from inside the top-10 of an extremely deep GT field in Saturday’s Rolex 24 At Daytona to kick off the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.

Antonio Garcia led the Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports effort in Sunday’s 15-minute qualifying session to wrap up the Roar Before the 24 weekend. He set a lap of 1:44.786 (122.306 mph) in the No. 3 Oshkosh/Mobil 1 Corvette Z06 GT3.R during a red-flag interrupted run that saw the field get just eight minutes of green-flag running.

Teammate Tommy Milner, in the sister No. 4 Oshkosh/Mobil 1 Corvette Z06 GT3.R, wasn’t far behind at 1:45.215 (121.807 mph). The depth of the class was evident in qualifying with the first 10 GTD PRO cars within a second. Further illustrating that, 23 GT cars were within the same margin.

Two of those belonged to new Corvette team AWA in the GTD class. First-year Corvette factory pilot Nico Varrone qualified ninth in class with the No. 17 Corvette Z06 GT3.R. He set a best time of 1:44.959 (122.105 mph) – one year after winning the Rolex 24 in with AWA in the LMP3 class.

Teammate Matt Bell was 14th in class in the No. 13 Corvette at 1:45.206 (121.818 mph).

The official competition debut of the Corvette Z06 GT3.R comes almost 15 months from the first time the initial test car turned its wheels for the first time on a track. Since that time, continued testing and development has come at circuits around the United States and at Chevrolet’s Driver in the Loop (DIL) simulator.

The Corvette Z06 GT3.R is Chevrolet’s first car built to global GT3 regulations. It’s based on the production Corvette Z06 supercar with the two sharing a significant amount of DNA.

The racecar is built on the same production aluminum chassis frame – from Chevrolet’s Bowling Green (Ky.) Assembly plant – as the road-going Z06. Similar carbon-fiber splitters for front downforce, and the surface area from the top of the windshield to the rear of the Z06 remained intact on the Z06 GT3.R. That includes side air ducts behind the doors — directly inspired by Z06 production road car — that help to cool the engine, transaxle and rear brakes.

The similarities carry over to the hand-built 5.5L, flat-plane crankshaft V8 engine in the Z06 GT3.R. Both original from the Bowling Green factory with the racing version sharing 80 percent of the production content from the Z06, including the crankshaft, connecting rods, cylinder heads, fuel injectors, coils, gaskets and a variety of other sensors.

Corvette’s latest racing challenger benefits from a legacy of previous race- and championship-winning racecars. Three previous generations of Corvette – C5-R, C7.R and C8.R – have visited Victory Lane at Daytona with the program claiming four previous class victories. The goal for this year’s Rolex is to claim Victory No. 5… and No. 6.