Corvette Racing Team at Sebring - At Last! Corvette Wins Sebring!

The factory Corvette Racing program goes into every race aiming to win, but they came to this year's 12 Hours of Sebring with something more. After losing at Sebring for each of the past 3 years, they were determined that it would not happen again, and worked long, hard hours all winter to all but guarantee victory.

I say "all but guarantee"-absolute certainty is unobtainable. There are simply too many variables that can't be controlled. But what a competitor can do, what Corvette Racing did, was thoroughly prepare for every conceivable possibility.

The result of this effort was a perfectly synchronized team whose every pit stop was as close to flawless as possible, a driver lineup second to none, and a pair of race cars honed to near perfection. To use aviation-engineering terminology, the C5-Rs actually had redundancy built into the critical systems that are prone to failure in the brutal conditions that typify Sebring.

For example, the C5-Rs have previously been plagued by starter motor failures. To avoid that, Pratt & Miller engineers devised a way to mount two starters, with two independent electrical circuits. If the primary starter failed, the driver only had to flip a switch to bring the backup starter online.

Preparation and engineering aside, the Corvettes also had to be fast if they hoped to win the race. And fast they were, with the Ron Fellows, Johnny O'Connell, and Oliver Gavin (yes, the same Oliver Gavin who helped beat the C5-Rs at Sebring last year driving a Saleen S7-R!) winning the GTS pole in no. 3. Second on the grid, only .241 second behind, was the no.4 Corvette driven by Andy Pilgrim, Kelly Collins, and Frank Freon.

The closest competitor was a Viper GTS-R, which was more than a second-and-a-half off the pole-sitting no. 3's pace. Further down in the class were two more Vipers, two Ferrari 550 Maranellos, and a trio of Saleen S7-Rs.

One of the Ferraris, painted a really powerful shade of green for their primary sponsor, Olive Garden restaurants, was still under construction in the paddock on race morning. Predictably, it ran into a litany of problems throughout the race and wound up finishing 59th in a field of 60 after completing all of only 11 laps

The other Ferrari, resplendent in traditional red, was the same Prodrive team car the Corvettes faced at the last Petite Le Mans. The car again proved quite fast (it set fastest GTS race lap at 1:58.607, making it the only GTS car to break the 2-minute barrier during the race), but electrical and mechanical woes cost too much time in the pits and put it out of contentio. Likewise, two of the three Vipers showed good speed, but wound up well off the winning pace thanks to mechanical woes.

The Saleens, which were more than a match for the Corvettes at last years Sebring race, faced their own unique problems this time around. To address harsh criticism involving non-production based cars racing in the production based GTS class, the ACO (the French governing body that sets the rules for Le Mans, and by extension, the American Le Mans series) formulated new rules last year to penalize purported production-based race cars that don't really have street going counterparts.

The ACO calls Saleen a small volume manufacturer and required a minimum of 12 S7 road cars be produced to qualify the S7-R race cars for GTS competition. When Sebring rolled around Saleen had not produced the required road cars, thus S7-Rs had to run with penalties consisting of an additional 70 kg of weight and a 15-percent smaller engine air inlet.

When the Saleens practiced without the handicap they were about a second slower than the C5-Rs, but with the penalties they were down another three-or-so seconds. If the Corvettes ran problem-free there was no possible way for a Saleen to win.