WEC
Corvette WEC drivers expect to be competitive "out of the box"
Corvette Racing drivers Tommy Milner and Nick Tandy are expecting to be competitive "out of the box" as the American marque tackles the full FIA World Endurance Championship schedule for the first time in 2022.
Jamie Klein
Edited: Mar 3, 2022, 8:41 PM
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Following the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship's decision to axe its GT Le Mans class in favour of a new GT Daytona Pro category, Corvette has opted to split its factory effort with the C8.R across IMSA and WEC for 2022, with a single car entered in each series for the full season.
Milner and Tandy will share driving duties aboard the #64 machine in the WEC, starting with next month's Sebring 1000 Miles opener, as they seek to challenge rival marques Ferrari and Porsche for GTE Pro honours.
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That race will mark the third WEC outing for the current C8.R outside of the Le Mans 24 Hours, following its debut at the Circuit of the Americas in early 2020 and another one-off in last year's Spa round.
On both of those occasions Corvette struggled to match the performance of the WEC's established GTE Pro marques, with an unfavourable Balance of Performance cited as a factor for the C8.R's lack of competitiveness.
But both Milner and Tandy are hopeful that 2022 will be a different story as Corvette has been meticulously preparing for its WEC assault instead of treating the races as mere extras on top of its IMSA campaign.
Asked by Motorsport.com if he had any concerns about a repeat of the difficult COTA and Spa showings, Milner replied: "In those situations, and looking specifically at performance, we were hoping for a more competitive situation. Both those races were unique in some sense: the COTA race was pretty early on with the C8.R, and last year’s race at Spa was a super cold event.
"In this situation for this year and knowing as long as we’ve known that this was the plan to split the two cars, this feels much more like [normal]. While this is a new championship in general for Corvette Racing, the experience we have at Le Mans is a part of that.
"We finished last year and started this year knowing what the program is. The BoP process does play a big role at times in the pace, performance and results.
"For us, it’s probably the best-case scenario in some ways starting at Sebring. We know the racetrack, we know the tires, we know the car. We should be pretty competitive out of the box, I would imagine.
"If that’s not the case, then we will have some data that us as a team and the WEC can use to hopefully make the racing close and exciting as this class always seems to provide.”
Tandy echoed Milner's opinion, saying he trusts that the WEC's BoP process will be "as fair as possible" to Corvette.
He added: "We ran the car in normal configuration at Spa last year, nothing has really changed since then, and of course we had all the running at Le Mans last year. We also have the Prologue [pre-season test] this year. I hope everything will be in a decent window to start with. I have no reason to think it won’t.
"Of course, the process takes time, but cars evolve and tires evolve, and from track to track it’s different. It’s pretty simple that we make sure our car and everything on our side is 100 percent and you just hope for a fair run at it.”
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