CORVETTE RACING AT SEBRING: World Championship Chase Begins - Milner, Tandy start FIA WEC title hunt at familiar spot for Corvette Racing
Competing at Sebring International Raceway is nothing unusual for Corvette Racing. Competing there in the FIA World
Endurance Championship, that’s a different story.
Nevertheless, this is the latest chapter for Corvette Racing as it begins its first full season in the FIA WEC. Tommy Milner and Nick Tandy will team
together in the No. 64 Mobil 1/SiriusXM Chevrolet Corvette C8.R for all six rounds of the World Championship – starting with the 1,000 Miles of
Sebring in the GTE Pro category for factory race teams.
Ahead of the March 18 are two days of testing at the 3.7-mile, 17-turn Sebring circuit Saturday and Sunday. It’ll be the first time that the No. 64
mid-engine Corvette will run in a primary yellow livery after two years in silver during the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and last year’s 24
Hours of Le Mans.
The No. 64 will run in the same configuration as the last two seasons in IMSA’s GT Le Mans (GTLM) category as well as GTE Pro at Le Mans last August.
Sebring and Corvette have a rich history going back nearly 25 years with more than 51,000 miles worth of racing and at least 10 times that in testing
and development over the last quarter-century. Part of that total came during the 2019 season when Corvette Racing entered one C7.R in the FIA WEC
round at Sebring in a one-off in addition to entries in that year’s Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring.
Both Milner and Tandy are no strangers to competition in the FIA WEC, albeit in differing degrees.
This will be Tandy’s third full-season campaign in the WEC with the British ace claiming a pair of victories and four pole positions in 19 starts.
Milner has two starts in the FIA WEC outside the 24 Hours of Le Mans:
2014 at Circuit of the Americas and 2018 at the Six Hours of Shanghai, each in a Corvette C7.R.
To prepare for its World Championship challenge, Corvette Racing has a full-time crew and engineering team that is dedicated to the full season,
all of whom have logged significant time with Corvette Racing in IMSA and the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
The lessons learned and data gained at Sebring and the next WEC round at Spa-Francorchamps will go a long way toward Corvette Racing’s return to the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June.
The 1,000 Miles of Sebring for the FIA World Endurance Championship is scheduled for noon ET on Friday, March 18 from Sebring International
Raceway. Qualifying is set for 7 p.m. ET on Thursday, March 17.
TOMMY MILNER, NO. 64 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R:
“I’m really excited about our full-season run in the WEC. Something about each event is exciting.
They’re all new tracks for me outside of Sebring and Le Mans. I’ve raced in Europe and Japan before, but not the tracks on our calendar.
So starting that off at Sebring is a cool throw-back to how it used to be for us in the American Le Mans Series.
Once we get to Sebring, I’m sure it will feel different. It will be a different path for us.
For personally, I’m excited to do this and race in a new championship on some new racetracks.
It’s a great chance to show off the mid-engine Corvette to fans all around the world.”
NICK TANDY, NO. 64 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R:
“In our usual season, Sebring is our second event, which is kind of normal. But for the WEC, it’s the start of our season. We plan to take the whole Prologue event
as a testing event, but this is the start of the WEC season. Sebring is a bit like Daytona.
You look at it, and it feels familiar with how the structure of your season is playing out. Everything beyond that is different.
There is something exciting about doing something different like this.
One of the things I’m really looking forward to in seeing how it’s going to work, we’ll have our entire Corvette Racing family together, racing in two events
separately for the first time. I’m really glad that the first time we split off as single-car entries, we’re actually all going to be there together.
That’s very cool. It’s not a situation where what we do with one car will necessarily help the other, but at the same time we’ll have multiple sets of
eyes on two sets of situations that are happening on the same track throughout the weekend.
Corvettes will be on track a lot over the two days.
Hopefully that will be a benefit; I can’t think of a way it’s a determent.
It is interesting to start our full-season begins at Sebring again and not Daytona.
It’s for a very good reason: the fact that we’re doing something new and different in going for a World Championship, and the good thing is that it starts in North America.”
