Corvette Racing will go for its seventh victory on the streets of southern California from the second and third rows of the GT Le Mans (GTLM) category following qualifying for Saturday’s Bubba Burger Sports Car Grand Prix at Long Beach.
Jan Magnussen qualified the No. 3 Mobil 1/SiriusXM Chevrolet Corvette C7.R fourth Friday and Oliver Gavin fifth in the No. 4 Mobil 1/SiriusXM Chevrolet Corvette C7.R for the third round of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, which will air live on FOX starting at 4 p.m. ET/1 p.m. PT.
Magnussen, a two-time winner at Long Beach, set a best lap of 1:17.293 (91.661 mph) in the Corvette he shares with Antonio Garcia. Not far back was Gavin, last year’s GTLM winner with Tommy Milner, at 1:17.533 (91.377 mph). Gavin is a four-time class winner at Long Beach to lead all IMSA drivers in victories at the 1.968-mile, 11-turn venue.
Corvette Racing is the defending GTLM race-winner after Gavin Milner won last season on the final lap. It is one of six victories for Corvette Racing since its Long Beach debut in 2007. No team in IMSA has won more times at America’s longest-running street race.
Friday’s qualifying session laid the groundwork for what could be another extremely tight race in GTLM. The top six cars were within 0.680 seconds.
The Bubba Burger Sports Car Grand Prix at Long Beach will air live at 4 p.m. ET on FOX. Live audio coverage from IMSA Radio is available on IMSA.com.
JAN MAGNUSSEN, NO. 3 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C7.R – FOURTH IN GTLM: “Not exactly where we wanted to be, but at least we improved the car from the final practice to qualifying. I don’t know what was wrong in the last practice. The car just didn’t have a lot of grip, but we found some speed for qualifying. P4 is not great, but it is not bad. We just have to see what we can get back when we get going.
“At Long Beach, qualifying is important because you can kind of dictate the race a little bit if you can get a lead. But if you can’t get pole, you better have an awesome race so that is what we are going to do.”
OLIVER GAVIN, NO. 4 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C7.R – FIFTH IN GTLM: “It’s been an interesting day. We’ve gone through a number of setup changes. I don’t think we had the ultimate pace to be on pole here, but I felt we could be on the front row. I think I was attacking the circuit but sometimes during that qualifying session I was just was overdriving – flying over curbs, getting too aggressive like though the turns Nine, 10 and 11 areas. I had a number of laps that were really good up to through Turn Nine and into 10, then the lap would unravel through the last two corners. It just got very, very frustrating. It was either through 10 or 11 that I would do something wrong. So, I have to get back and look at that. But we are P5, and we proved last year that we can fight and battle from there. We genuinely have a good race car. I’ve just got to get it figured out how to get through 10 and 11! I will go back and look at that and have it figured it out by tomorrow. It’ll be good.”
