Introducing the 2011 C6.R racing teams
After ending the 2010 season on a high note with a win at Road Atlanta, Corvette Racing begins the 2011 season with two brand new race cars. The C6.R has been improved and is both faster and more reliable than its earlier counterparts.
Built by Pratt & Miller, the new Corvettes feature a variety of subtle updates, including a redesigned rear apron. The most obvious change, however, is to the steering wheel. Revisions to the rulebooks now allow GT class cars to use paddle-shift transmissions – an option that was previously reserved for LMP (LeMans Prototypes) class cars.
Another important rule change now requires GT cars to run the same specification rear wing at each race for the entire year.
However, the biggest changes to the Corvette Racing teams involve the driver lineups. Tommy Milner will replace long-time #3 Corvette racing pilot Johnny O’Connell, who left the team to spearhead the Cadillac Racing Team in a new division of the SCCA Pro Racing World Challenge Program. Milner comes to Team Corvette after many successful years driving for Porsche, Panoz, and most recently, BMW. Milner will partner with Oliver Beretta for the full 2011 season in the #3 C6.R Corvette.
The #4 C6.R Corvette driver lineup also has a change for the 2011 season. Veteran racer Richard Westbrook will be taking the place of Emmanuel Collard for the long-distance events at Le Mans, Sebring, and Road Atlanta. Although he is a former two-time Porsche Supercup champion, Westbrooks states that he is “absolutely delighted to be joining the Corvette Racing program for 2011.”
While there is no doubt that the competition will be intense in 2011, both of the Corvette teams have already proven themselves – in early season testing at Sebring, where they repeatedly topped the timing sheets – and in early season competition, where they achieved a 3rd/4th place finish at Sebring and a 2nd/5th place finish at Long Beach. If these early results are an indicator of things to come, there is no question that the new C6.R racing teams of Corvette Racing are destined for continued success in the 2011 season.
Over the past several months, the team behind Corvsport.com has been excited to see a continual growth in the number of visitors that have taken the time to visit this website. While we realize that there are still many areas of the site that are far from complete, we wanted to provide visitors to the site with a resource they can utilize to track progress as we populate the site with content.
On the Corvette side of the site, we are working to complete the remaining pages of the C4 section. Over the next 3-4 weeks, we should complete all areas of the C4 Corvette, including the highly anticipated DIY section. Upon completion of the C4 section of the site, the Corvette development team will be moving directly onto the C5 Corvette. There are already a number of C5 pages uploaded to the site, but these pages will continue to be revised as the C5 section begins more formal development in the near future.
