Corvette by Pratt Miller Captures Elusive Detroit IMSA GT Win
For Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports, winning in Detroit was an important milestone to achieve. The team had not delivered an IMSA points race triumph in the city since 2008 on the former Raceway on Belle Isle Park.
They did so on Saturday in the Chevrolet Detroit Sports Car Classic. But despite leading 73 of 79 laps in the fourth round of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship Grand Touring Daytona Pro (GTD PRO) season, Alexander Sims and Antonio Garcia did not have it all easy in their No. 3 Corvette Z06 GT3.R.
Sims led the opening 24 laps from pole position and pitted 32 minutes into the 100-minute race, turning the car over to Garcia. As he explained, he had the easy part.
“I was honestly pretty nervous going into the race, because of knowing how much mayhem can unfold that's outside of your control around here,” Sims said. “Once the race got off to a clean start for us, I was able to maintain position after the first corner and our Corvette was working really, really well. The tires switched on nicely and I was able to, you know, sensibly pull out a pretty good gap. Even with one restart, it was fairly smooth sailing, to be honest. That also reduced the amount of times the GTPs came past me.
“But then with GTP traffic and the restarts at the end, it was mad to watch.”
Garcia’s stint covered the “mad” portion of the race in Motown.
In the middle portion of the race, the Spaniard lost a significant chunk of his multiple-second lead behind the tail end of the GTD PRO field. A snarling pack of rivals behind, including Jack Hawksworth in the No. 14 Vasser Sullivan Racing Lexus RC F GT3, gave chase but were unable to make a move past. The gap fell to under a second before he was able to get past and then expand the lead.
“It's part of managing and knowing how fast he is, and defending against the cars behind you,” Garcia explained. “So, you also need to know how much you can push him in order to be as fast as possible. Because there were laps where I was really on him, and he was really defending very hard, but I knew when you do that, you lose a lot of time.
“There was a point where they were getting really close, so I had made a move. I mean, I know I'm the leading car. They don't want to lose a lap, and I also knew once I cleared them that he didn't care anymore.”
Garcia, too, had to dodge the outward-leaning walls of the 1.645-mile Detroit Street Circuit and drove most of the second half of the race with a loose right hand driver’s side mirror. He then also had to navigate what he thought was fluid on the track, and as the first car through, had to tiptoe through.
A pair of late-race full-course cautions increased the drama and the respective heart rates.
At one stage, it appeared Hawksworth had made a pass of Garcia after contacting the rear of the No. 3 car and emerging ahead exiting the tight and narrow Turn 1.
But that pass was negated after it was deemed to have been completed after the full-course caution started. A subsequent reorder put the No. 3 Corvette ahead of the No. 14 Lexus, and with a drive-through penalty then assessed to the No. 14 car for incident responsibility, it dropped down the order.
“I was completely on top of oil,” Garcia said. “Out of Turn 9, last corner, he had a good run, but as soon as we went across the line, I saw the yellow flags and in my dash with the flag, too. I didn’t know how our car is right now, and that's something that I didn't know also on the next restart, how the car would behave after pretty heavy contact we had on that situation.”
Upon a final restart, Garcia was able to streak away to the checkered flag by 1.935 seconds.
This secured Garcia’s 32nd IMSA win, tying him with a trio of sports car veterans in Allan McNish, Ricky Taylor, and Sascha Maassen for 18th on the all-time sports car winners’ list. But it’s his first at Detroit. For Sims, it’s his ninth win.
The podium positions changed drastically in the final 10 minutes as nearly the entire rest of the GTD PRO field leaned into Detroit’s propensity for fisticuffs, set against the prominent Joe Louis “The Fist” that sits inside the Turn 3 hairpin.
At the final restart, the order was Garcia, Nicky Catsburg in the sister No. 4 Corvette and Aaron Telitz in the sister No. 15 Vasser Sullivan Racing Lexus RC F GT3. Contact between Cars 4 and 15 in Turn 3 saw Car 4 assessed a drive-through for incident responsibility.
Another incident between Cars 59 and 64, also in Turn 3, saw the No. 59 car assessed a drive-through for incident responsibility.
“It was a bit of a Mario Kart scene behind my rearview camera,” Garcia laughed.
Two blue cars that ran otherwise quiet races and stayed out of the wars benefited as a result. The Lamborghini Temerario GT3 scored its first IMSA podium in second with Andrea Caldarelli and Sandy Mitchell second in the No. 9 Pfaff Motorsports entry. Then Ford Racing made it back to the podium with Monterey winners Frederic Vervisch and Christopher Mies in third in their No. 65 Ford Mustang GT3.
To reflect how chaotic the finish was, the No. 9 car and No. 65 car took the final restart from fifth and seventh places and wound up on the podium.
The points also are in close quarters leaving Detroit. Catsburg and Tommy Milner in the No. 4 Corvette unofficially lead Connor De Phillippi and Neil Verhagen in the No. 1 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3 EVO by 18 points, Mies and Vervisch by 20 and Detroit winners Garcia and Sims by 31.
The No. 4 Corvette finished seventh and No. 1 BMW finished fourth on the roller coaster day.
The next GTD PRO round is part of the next all-class WeatherTech Championship race, the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen at Watkins Glen International on Sunday, June 28.
