No. 63 Corvette C7.R ninth, Milner 10th in No. 64 Corvette in GTE Pro order
LE MANS, France (June 14, 2017) – Corvette Racing returned to the track at the Circuit de la Sarthe on Wednesday as it laid the groundwork for what it hopes is a ninth class victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The Chevrolet Corvette C7.Rs both were inside the top-10 of the GTE Pro class following the first round of qualifying.
Antonio Garcia in the No. 63 Mobil 1/SiriusXM Chevrolet Corvette C7.R was the quickest driver among the two Corvette Racing entries in the initial two-hour session. He set a time of 3:54.827 (179.58 mph) on his last lap of the evening. It placed Garcia, who will drive with Jan Magnussen and Jordan Taylor, a scant 0.049 seconds clear of Tommy Milner in the No. 64 Mobil 1/SiriusXM Corvette C7.R.
Milner, who will share duties with Oliver Gavin and Marcel Fässler, set his best time of 3:54.876 (179.57 mph) in the opening phase of Wednesday’s session, which was delayed at the start by nearly 30 minutes.
The priorities for Wednesday qualifying were for each driver to complete the required five laps at night in order to race in the dark as well as fine-tune and improve the setup from the Test Day a week-and-a-half ago. With the former now accomplished, the main goal for Corvette Racing engineers and crew will be to increase the performance of the two Corvettes in hopes of progressing up the qualifying order during Thursday’s final pair of two-hour sessions.
Corvette Racing last won at Le Mans 2015. It enters on a three-race win streak in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
The 85th running of the Le Mans 24 Hours is set for 3 p.m. CET/9 a.m. ET on Saturday, June 17. Practice and qualifying sessions are scheduled for June 14-15. Live television and streaming video will be available between FOX Sports 1, FOX Sports 2 and FOX Sports GO. Live audio coverage of practice, qualifying and the race will be available from Radio Le Mans, which also will broadcast on Sirius Channel 138 and XM Channel 201.
ANTONIO GARCIA, NO. 63 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C7.R – NINTH IN GTE PRO: “It was a pretty smooth session. We tried a lot of different things that needed testing and validating. Since the session was shortened by more than 20 minutes, we decided to just through our program and not bother with a quick qualifying lap. So we learned a lot of things which will help us for the race. We’re still happy with where we are and how the car is behaving. Now we have to analyze everything and see where we can improve.”
TOMMY MILNER, NO. 64 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C7.R – 1OTH IN GTE PRO: “We didn’t go for a full-on qualifying effort. We were trying. You could see Antonio was pushing hard at the end, and I was pushing pretty hard on my best lap. There are still little bits to be found here and there if we go all-out for a qualifying lap. Our Corvette feels pretty good. It’s comfortable to drive generally. We’ve been all over the place a little bit with setup stuff to find the sweet spot of the car. In that sense, I don’t think we treated this is a real qualifying session. There are some things still to try and learn. We got Marcel some good laps in the night to get him accustomed to this car in the night. It was pretty dark for me when I was out so that was good for me, and obviously Olly got quite a few laps at the end there. We’re ticking all the boxes… all the things that matter for the race. I think tomorrow we’ll see if we can climb up the board a little bit with a more concerted qualifying effort.”
