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Is Chevrolet Corvette the greatest
racing brand from America?
Well, it could be.
In 2012, in the America Le Mans series, Corvette racing
won the GTE championship.
In Grand Am with the Corvette Daytona prototypes, it helped
Chevrolet win the engine manufacturer's championship
with those five Corvette DP's running around with
the 'vette body work.
60 years of Corvette racing and winning.
Now we're not going to take a deep dive, but just a taste of
Corvette racing through the years.
A snapshot look at each generation of Corvette from C1
all the way through today's C6, maybe a little bit of C7.
And I'm not ignoring the current news,
but you know what?
Looking at what's going on, I'm going to wait until some
things happen.
For example, with Lewis Hamilton.
Sure, he left McLaren to Mercedes.
But I want to see what he does performing for the rest of the
year, and what happens next year when he gets in that
silver car.
I could have talked about the 2013 F1 schedule, which now
has two US Grand Prix.
One confirmed, and one not so much.
Circuit of the Americas starts in 2012.
And I could have talked about what's going to happen in 2013
at the circuit.
You're going to have a Grand Am race, a combined double
header of WEC and the American Le Mans sports car racing, and
then the F1 race.
But I want to wait to see that action happen.
I could have talked about new cars.
Hyundai, for example, announcing their WRC car at
Paris, coming in 2014 to compete with Toyota and
Volkswagen, and God knows who else, and pulling
out of all US racing.
But again, I want more facts.
And I could have talked about my trip to Lime Rock for the
Grand Am race.
Where the Grand Am officials got all insulted that I didn't
show up with a Drive camera, just like I did at ALMS.
But we talked to them, their attitude is pretty much on the
same page of looking forward to the future.
So let's talk about Corvette, because it's going to be all
Corvette between Grand Am and American Le Mans next year.
So it's time to take a look at what they've done.
So today we're going to talk about Corvette racing, but
before I do, let me get the suit issue out of the way.
I've got a couple of business meetings, and
we're dressed to impress.
And if you don't like it, please email me at
subscriptions@ge ntlemensquarterly.com, and
understand what fashion's all about.
Let's get to the Corvette racing story, because it
started with the Daytona prototype thing that happened
this weekend.
They won the manufacturer's championship for Chevrolet,
and Corvette and Chevy are going to make a
big deal about that.
But what I'd like to do is go back and look at their
history, which includes how they won Le Mans with the
production based race car, and all those ALMS championships.
So is Corvette the greatest racing brand ever out of the
United States?
Well, let's start with C1.
First generation Corvette from 1953 to 1962.
And this may be the first Corvette race car ever.
The car ran the Panamera down in Mexico.
But the real story of the first generation Corvette was
the 1957 SS Mule that Zora Duntov developed, brought to
Sebring, had Fangio in the car doing some practice laps.
It evolved to the SS race car you see here.
Which got us to 1963 to '67, and the C2 generation.
And the racing story here was really all
about the grand sports.
Five of them, maybe six were built, and guys like Penske
got a hold of them.
Here's Penske's grand sport in the Sebring paddock.
C3 Corvettes ran from 1968 to 1982.
And the two racing stories, well, actually the three
racing stories caught my mind this way.
In Europe, Greeter--
I think it's Greeter--
ran the Le Mans Corvettes multiple years.
There was always that yellow car and a blue car, and
actually, if you watch McQueen's Le Mans movie, you
can see the Corvette pulling out of the start right behind
the Porsches.
In America, there was the Greenwood Corvette programs.
First of all, production based.
As you see here the, car number 28.
And then more exotic, with all that bat wing, wide fender
shaping that actually, Zora designed for John Greenwood
and those Corvettes, and they ran IMSA GT in the US and
internationally.
And it all evolved to the most extreme Corvette, John Paul,
his dad, the Sun team ran this IMSA GT car, which had pretty
much everything exotic, and pretty much non-Corvette.
But it was out there under that brand.
That brings us to the C4 generation's
Corvette, 1984 to 1996.
And the production race cars kind of took a backseat to
this Corvette racing GTP, raced by Hendrick racing.
Not a V8, a twin turbo V6, but mega horsepower.
And a lot of people think this is a beautiful,
beautiful, race car.
It kind of performed.
It was always up front, 12 pole positions, but only two
wins in its life.
But it certainly got attention for Corvette racing.
From the production standpoint, Corvette built
their own racing series back then.
The Corvette challenge series.
And here's one of the race cars.
Becoming pretty good collectible cars, and
certainly the launching point for a lot of name drivers back
in that time.
And Corvette racing, the production side actually did
do some international racing.
In 1995, a guy named Doug Rippie, a real Corvette racing
fan, built this ZR1 with the Lotus ZR1 based motor, his
version of new arrow, and took it to Sebring to race.
Didn't do well, but developed it to bring it to Le Mans.
It didn't succeed, but it certainly got people's
attention being there.
And back in the US, a company called Protofab built a
modified tube frame GTO Corvette, and ran an IMSA in
that class.
And I believe won those championships.
Which got us to C5, the 1997 to 2004 years for Corvette.
And frankly in racing, what everyone really remembers most
is when the C5R raced at Daytona with Dale Earnhardt
Sr. and Jr. in the cars.
Now, I don't think the Dale number three car won, but it
was certainly there at the finish, and everyone was
paying attention to the great Dale
Earnhardt racing a Corvette.
And the stories go on that if Dale was still here, he would
be running his own Corvette racing team.
C6, the current generation.
2005 up to 2013.
And we all know about the ALMS car.
GTE championships many, many times.
And repeated Le Mans 24 wins, because really, that's the
focus of this program.
And then in 2012, Corvette decided to spend some money at
Jim France's behest to build Corvette body work.
And they won eight of 13 Grand Am races, but the chassis
underneath is really a Riley or a Delara,
or the Coyote chassis.
But the body work is supposed to be all Corvette.
The engines are from the Earnhardt Childress racing
engine company.
They did the motors, they won the manufacturer's
championship for Chevrolet.
Does that Corvette Daytona prototype
body work look familiar?
Well, it kind of should if you've been
following Corvette racing.
Because back in 2010, Pratt Miller did a design study, an
engineering study, for a Corvette GTP, which were to be
the new ACO Le Mans rules for a category of car.
It went all the way to a wind tunnel model.
And I've still got the engineering proposal sitting
in my files.
Shh, don't tell.
Which gets us to C7, the new car coming in 2014.
Here's the Jalopnik.com release of what the production
car will look like.
And as you probably know, and maybe have heard in an earlier
Shakedown, Pratt Miller is working on the
C7R are as we speak.
And I'm assuming the Daytona prototype body work will be
updated to C7 look as well.
So here's where I stop and ask you guys to weigh in.
This was a snapshot look.
I'm sure you experts about Corvette and racing have a lot
more details, and can fill in a lot of blanks about what
went on with Corvette racing history.
Sure, they won a lot of championships over the years.
And there were a lot of race cars out there.
Back in 1973 at Sebring, for example, there were a full 18
Corvettes running that race.
But how well they performed, and how much they really won
maybe is a topic for you guys to discuss.
And any details of great Corvette racing history, we'd
love for you to share.
And that's the bottom line question I want you to ask.
Is Corvette really the greatest racing
brand out of America?
Or is there something else we should be talking about?
On Friday we'll get to some other racing news, and like I
said earlier, with the big racing news, we'll catch it as
they do things.
Who cares about my opinion?
Now, I'm going to go straighten my tie, go to work,
make some money, and you stay tuned for Tuned.
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