Corvette Racing have spoken of their joy at claiming a 1-2 finish in the American Le Mans Series (ALMS) GT class at Baltimore in a race described by the team as “one of the wildest and unpredictable races in memory.”
Jan Magnussen and Antonio Garcia gained their second GT win of the season getting past the BMW of Dirk Muller late on with the #4 of Oliver Gavin and Tommy Milner finishing second, defending their GT title from the 2012 season.
Magnussen said of the race: “It was a really weird race – a sprint race with really no pit stops. There was one in the beginning once we restarted the race but everyone had the driving time limits to figure out.
“We got a little bit messed up in the pit stop because of a radio failure so there was no way to tell Antonio that the pits were open. It was impossible for him to know if it was all cars, just P cars or just GT cars. He made the right decision. He stopped, spun it around and only lost a couple of spots when we could have lost them all. It was good thinking and reaction on his part. After that, it was a matter of going as hard as we could. We didn’t have to worry about tires or fuel. We just needed to go.”
The result has moved Corvette into a strong position at the top of the GT manufacturers table, as well as moving the #3 of Magnussen and Garcia into second in the drivers championship behind the pairing in the #4.
ALMS championship leader, Oliver Gavin, said: “It’s pretty amazing that we were sitting in a wreck at Turn 4 – both cars – with others and somehow we’ve managed to pull a 1-2 out of that! It was one of those wacky races that you couldn’t take your eyes off of. You have to take every single one, and I’m very happy to take second in this one.”
The next challenge for Corvette, going into the final three rounds of the championship, is a journey into the unknown as the team travel down to the Lone Star State of Texas as the ALMS joins up with the World Endurance Championship at the Circuit of the Americas on September 21st.
To see if the team can pull of another GT master class viewers in the UK can watch on alms.com or Motors TV, viewers in America can go to ESPN 3.
