BOWMANVILLE, Ont. — There was nothing unlucky Sunday at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park as Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports claimed its 13th IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race win at the legendary road racing venue near Toronto.
Alexander Sims and Antonio Garcia dominated the Grand Touring Daytona PRO (GTD PRO) class of the Chevrolet Grand Prix to earn the inaugural IMSA victory for the Corvette Z06 GT3.R, the first-ever Corvette built to international GT3 homologation for sale to customer teams.
Making the triumph even sweeter, the No. 3 Corvette led home the No. 4 Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller entry shared by Tommy Milner and Nicky Catsburg for a 1-2 Corvette finish in GTD PRO ahead of season points leaders Seb Priaulx and Laurin Heinrich in the No. 77 AO Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R.
The Pratt Miller Corvettes had shown plenty of speed in the first half of the 2024 season, attaining three Motul Pole Awards – including Sims’ pole-winning effort at CTMP on Saturday. But a combination of misfortune and customary new car reliability issues meant their best finish to date this year was third place for each car.
At the track traditionally known as Mosport where Corvettes have always run strong, the Pratt Miller team dominated from start to finish. Garcia had established a comfortable 4.5-second gap to Catsburg and had nearly 20 seconds in hand over Heinrich when a full-course caution bunched the field with 16 minutes remaining in the two-hour, 40-minute contest. When racing resumed with about eight minutes to go, neither Heinrich nor anyone else could match the speed of the yellow cars.
The final few laps provided a bit of drama, as Garcia and Catsburg took the restart in a crowd of GTD class traffic. But Catsburg protected the 1-2 finish for Corvette. Garcia’s margin of victory over Catsburg was 0.408 seconds, with Heinrich 1.064 seconds in arrears at the checkered flag.
It was a milestone 30th win in IMSA competition for Garcia, whose history with the Corvette Racing program dates to 2009.
“It’s always special to have a first win for the car,” said Garcia. “I’m really proud of that, and proud of the Pratt Miller guys. It was really important to get the Corvette GT3.R its first win in IMSA; that’s what we really wanted. And we had a perfect weekend. We led both practices, amazing pole position by Alex, and then we just ran P1 all the way through.”
Garcia said he had taken care of his Michelin tires and believed he had enough in hand to hold off a late challenge from Catsburg or Heinrich had it materialized.
“It looked easy, but it was kind of difficult – especially the last restart with all the GTD cars ahead of us,” Garcia said. “It was interesting – that’s the classic situation we don’t really like. But still I managed to stay ahead and fantastic to finally have a Corvette 1-2 – not only in qualifying, but in the race.”
Sims was visibly fired up after his pole-winning qualifying lap on Saturday, and the breakthrough victory for the Corvette GT3 program built on that enthusiasm. Corvette was the fifth manufacturer to win in GTD PRO competition this year.
“It’s a big thing, honestly, and it was great to get the Corvette 1-2 here at Mosport, which is such a big event for Chevrolet,” he said. “We’ve had good pace in qualifying this season so far, but haven’t quite been able to convert it. Today we executed well, and were fast when we needed to be, had pace in the car. Just a really, really nice race.”
Henrich and Priaulx extended their GTD PRO championship advantage to 98 points over Ross Gunn (No. 23 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo) and 120 points over Jack Hawksworth and Ben Barnicoat (No. 14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3). Gunn and Mario Farnbacher finished fifth at CTMP, while the No. 14 Lexus started on the front row but dropped out with an engine issue.