The GT1 Corvette so overwhelmed its competition they all dropped out, so now a new GT2 version will switch series and take on a new line-up of competitors.
Leaf through the record books of the American Le Mans Series (ALMS) sports car races, and you will find that it is not Audi or Porsche or Ferrari or BMW or Mercedes-Benz that holds most of the significant racing records. Not by a long shot.
That honor belongs to the Detroit-based, Detroit-sponsored Compuware Team Corvette organization, using a series of front-engined coupes with simple pushrod V-8 engines, not exotic rear-engined V-12 cars with double-overhead camshafts and four valves per cylinder.
The yellow and black Corvettes built and raced by Pratt & Miller Engineering of Wixom, Michigan, hold the ALMS records for most starts by its drivers, most pole positions in the GTS and GT1 classes (59), most wins in a single season (9), most consecutive wins in a season (8), most podium finishes in a season (12), the longest winning streak (24 races in a row), and the most wins over ten seasons (70), not to mention eight consecutive GT1 championships.
The team has won the 24 Hours of Daytona — first overall and first in class — won seven times at the 12 Hours of Sebring and the 1000-mile Petit Le Mans, and has scored six GT class wins at the toughest race on Earth, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, including its latest just two months ago. No other GT team in history comes close.
Over the years, Team Corvette was so dominant that, one by one, all of its GT1 competitors, Aston Martin, Dodge Viper, Saleen and others, retired from the class, and the two Corvettes raced only each other. With the victory at Le Mans, 2009, that chapter has come to a close, and the team has built brand new race cars for a lower class, the GT2 series. Once again, they will race against serious factory-backed competition from Porsche, Ferrari, and BMW as well as private entries from Dodge, Ford, Jaguar and Panoz.
The switch from GT1 to GT2 meant design and construction of entirely new Pratt & Miller C6.R race cars that conform much more closely to their streetgoing counterparts, in this case, the Corvette ZR1 supercar.
The GT2 Corvettes share the profile of the ZR1, the front and rear panels, the front splitter under the nose, and a standard interior modified for safety. The rules for GT2 mandate that the cars use production laminated glass instead of polycarbonate for windows, steel brakes instead of carbon brakes, aluminum wheels instead of magnesium wheels, a much smaller rear wing, and a completely flat rear floor pan. Overall, the GT2 version has much, much less aerodynamic downforce front and rear
Rules also dictate stock frames, which in the case of the ZR1 are aluminum as opposed to the steel frames under the old GT1 cars. Because the steel for the cars’ rollcages couldn’t be welded directly to the aluminum chassis, a very complex solution was worked out in cooperation with safety experts at Detroit’s Wayne State University using a threaded socket-and-post solution, space-age sand and aerospace coatings to prevent a galvanic response between the two metals which would weaken the joint.
The engine, too, is downsized, from 7.0 liters to 6.0 liters, the maximum allowed in GT2. The team says horsepower is reduced from 590 to 470, and peak torque from 640 to 535 foot-pounds. ALMS has reduced the size of the engine’s intake restrictors, using a weight-to-displacement scale, from 30.6 millimeters down to 28.6 millimeters, a 6.5 percent reduction that, along with the missing 61 cubic inches of displacement, accounts for much of the power reduction. For the first time in the history of the program, all of the team’s racing engines will be built in-house by GM Powertrain in the same facility where the standard ZR1 supercharged engines are hand-built.
The reason the Corvette team survived all the rounds of GM cutbacks and the subsequent bankruptcy, says Doug Fehan, the man who has been the day-to-day program manager of the Corvette team since its inception in 1999, is that it provides GM with a substantial return on its investment and that it is relevant to the production Corvette street cars, now more than ever. A third reason is that it was the first racing team anywhere in the world to voluntarily switch from running gasoline to E85 cellulosic ethanol fuel, with the blessing and encouragement of GM and the ALMS series.
At their first outing at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course near Lexington, Ohio, the new Corvette GT2s qualified third (the #3 car with Johnny O’Connell and co-driver Jan Magnussen) and sixth (the #4 car with Oliver Gavin and Olivier Beretta) respectively after two practice sessions.
In their first race, at Mid-Ohio, Johnny O’Connell and Jan Magnussen finished as runners-up in the #3 Compuware Corvette C6.R, 21 seconds behind the class-winning Porsche 911 RSR of Patrick Long and Joerg Bergmeister. Oliver Gavin and Olivier Beretta finished fourth in the #4 Compuware Corvette C6.R, one lap down after getting caught out by the safety car during a full-course caution.
“It’s not our usual result, but nonetheless today was a great victory for Corvette Racing,” said Fehan. “To come out here with only a few days of testing on two brand-new race cars, run with the leaders, demonstrate our pit stop prowess and race strategy, and finish second is a testament to how hard this team works. I think every fan of sports car racing now knows there is going to be some spectacular GT racing in the American Le Mans Series.”
The ethanol-burning Corvette C6.Rs also swept the top two spots in the Michelin Green X Challenge, with the best overall scores among the 26 GT and prototype entries based on energy used, greenhouse gases emitted, and petroleum fuels displaced.
“Not only did we see a tremendous display of great planning and execution today, but also we saw Corvette win the Michelin Green X Challenge yet again,” Fehan said. “That is emblematic of the new General Motors, fast, mean, lean, and green.”