ON THE HIGH BANKING

Corvette Racing takes on the world in the IMSA Rolex 24 at Daytona.

- RICHARD PRINCE

In the middle of January, Corvette Racing returned to the Daytona International Speedway, the track where the program began racing 25 years ago. In its 12 Daytona 24 Hour starts since the first in 1999, the Corvette team has won the race four times, the most recent coming in 2021, when Antonio Garcia, Jordan Taylor, and Nicky Catsburg led a 1-2 Corvette Racing finish in the final Rolex 24 for the GT Le Mans (GTLM) class.

This year, for the first time in the team's long history racing in the Rolex 24 at Daytona, only one Corvette was entered. Though there are profound changes taking place within Corvette Racing, most notably the coming addition of a GT3 class C8 that will start racing in 2024, this year's Daytona entry looked almost identical to last year's. Once again, Chevrolet fielded a C8.R in the IMSA GTD PRO class with a waiver, which is required because the GTLM-spec Corvette isn't GT3-homologated as required by IMSA's GTD class rules.

The same highly capable crew from Team Chevy and Pratt Miller Engineering was behind this year's Daytona effort, but there was one notable change to the driver lineup: Tommy Milner joined full-season regulars Antonio Garcia and Jordan Taylor as the third driver. Last year, Tommy was paired with Nick Tandy in the FIA World Endurance Championship series Corvette entry, but this year he's serving as the third driver for the long IMSA races-Sebring and Petit Le Mans, in addition to Daytona. Most of Tommy's time in 2023 will be devoted to driving the new GT3-spec Corvette in testing, however.