Memories from Corvette's two decades at Le Mans

The news yesterday that Corvette Racing would not be participating in the rescheduled 2020 edition of the Le Mans 24 Hours in September was a significant one for sportscar racing.

Although a statement from General Motors' vice-president of motorsports and performance Jim Campbell stressed that Chevrolet intends to return to Le Mans with the latest-generation Corvette C8.R, which made its race debut at the Daytona 24 Hours in January, the decision to withdraw its two-car entry brings a temporary halt to a 20-year streak of appearances dating back to 2000.

Since then, the Pratt & Miller factory team has scored class honours eight times, six times in the GTS and GT1 class, and twice in the current GTE-Pro era, which took over from GT2 in 2011.

Briton Oliver Gavin has been at the wheel for five of those, including the most recent in 2015 with the outgoing C7.R, while Jan Magnussen and Olivier Beretta both have four class wins.

Last year, Autosport polled drivers, long-time Corvette Racing programme manager Doug Fehan and Pratt & Miller boss Gary Pratt for their favourite memories from the two decades.

Lone-star 'Vette rides home, 2015 Le Mans

The factory Chevrolet team was up against it in 2015. Magnussen had crashed the #63 Corvette in the Porsche Curves when the throttle stuck open. Both driver and car were rendered hors de combat, reducing the team's GTE Pro assault to a single C7.R driven by Gavin, Tommy Milner and Jordan Taylor.

"That we were going to be racing with one car had everyone competing against us excited," recalls Fehan (below), who has been at the helm of Corvette Racing since the very beginning of the project.

"The guys in the Pratt & Miller team could have got their dauber down and cried in their beer, but they said, 'You know what, we're gonna pull through and win this thing'. They rallied round and the two car crews worked shifts so that the mechanics and engineers stayed fresh and were always at the top of their game."

What had quickly turned into a race of attrition boiled down into a straight fight between the #64 Chevy and the best of the factory AF Corse Ferrari 458 Italia GT2s, driven by Gianmaria Bruni, Toni Vilander and Giancarlo Fisichella. And what a fight.

The two cars swapped the lead back and forth for the better part of 10 hours before a gearbox issue for the Ferrari left the way clear for the Corvette to take an emotional victory.

"Was there any particular instance where that paid dividends? I can't say that, but I know there were fewer opportunities for mistakes in the pits or on strategy," continues Fehan. "I believe the whole team took inspiration from the way we all pulled together."

Milner counts the second of his two Le Mans wins as his favourite, too.

"All the attention switched over to Olly, Jordan and myself and the pressure was amplified," he says. "That was a big deal because Le Mans is the biggest race of the season.

"That put a lot more weight on our shoulders, but we also got more help in the way the two car crews worked together. I remember being surprised when Kyle [Millay], who normally engineers the #63, came on the radio rather than Chuck [Houghton]. But it was also reassuring in a way, knowing that everyone was pulling together to give us the best chance to win.

"We kinda had the perfect race: we didn't have any problems on the track and we didn't have any problems in the pits. We certainly had a fast race car that day, but just as important was that we ran the whole time without any drama or confusion."

There's another reason why the 2015 win is so special to Milner: team-mate Gavin's antics at the end of the slow-down lap.

"Olly did a pretty awesome burn-out right in front of the mechanics," he explains. "It was one of the best I've ever seen and a great way to end a crazy week."

Completing the hat-trick, 2006 Le Mans

The completion of a hat-trick with the same team of drivers is the highlight of Gavin's stint with Corvette Racing, which was extended to 18 starts at Le Mans in 2019. The 2006 GT1 victory aboard a C6.R shared with Magnussen and Olivier Beretta came during a period of intense rivalry with the Prodrive squad's Ferrari 550 Maranello and then the Aston Martin DBR9, one that stretched across the Atlantic into the American Le Mans Series.

"That win was special because the battle with Aston was so intense," recalls Gavin. "They were in their second year with that car and were really strong, but there was some fantastic racing along the way.

"To come out on top and claim a third in a row with the same group of drivers will always mean a lot."

Gavin and co moved to the front with three hours to go when the Aston shared by Stephane Ortelli, Pedro Lamy and Stephane Sarrazin ran into clutch problems. "It was one of the hottest Le Mans I've done and in the end the heat played into our hands," says Gavin.

"They had it on outright speed, but we were a bit better on the fuel. But the killer blow for them was the heat. The Aston boys were really struggling on Sunday and in the end we won through on reliability."

Remembering the first time, 2001 Le Mans

Firsts are always special, and that goes for Corvette Racing's maiden win in what was then known as the GTS class with the C5.R in 2001.

For Ron Fellows, who shared the winning car with Johnny O'Connell and Scott Pruett, it was all the sweeter because he was Corvette Racing's first driver signing and had lived through the project's early lows: "To take the win knowing where we'd come from when we started testing in the fall of 1997 and the struggles we'd gone through when we started racing in North America in 1999 and then when we finally arrived at Le Mans in 2000 made that one special.

"My first contract with Chevrolet had been to race the Camaro in Trans-Am, but they'd pulled the plug after 1996 and my deal was coming to an end. We'd just bought a house and I was worried for the future. Then I got a call from Herb Fishel [director of GM Racing and the architect of the Corvette Racing programme] and he talked me though the plan. I thought, 'Wow', and told him that I was in."

The famously wet race also resulted in what Fellows believes was his only ever argument with Pratt during his time on the Corvette squad. He demanded to pit for intermediates at the end of the reconnaissance lap, but Pratt wasn't convinced it was the correct call.

"The air was damp and it was windy, and I wanted to start on intermediates," Fellows recalls. "Gary told me over the radio that everyone else was starting on slicks, and I yelled at him that I didn't care. After a couple of laps as I was tumbling down the field I was beginning to think, 'Whoops', but then I came out of Arnage Corner and could see a wall of rain in front of me."

It turned out to be the right call. Fellows gained the better part of a lap on the rest of the field. He and his team-mates would have finished well inside the top six overall but for a late precautionary pitstop.

"I knew how fragile those cars were; we still have very delicate transmissions and huge problems with our starter motors," explains Fehan. "The outside of the track was still muddy and wet, so one of our guys could have had an innocuous spin and gone to turn the key and had nothing happen.

"We didn't care about finishing in the top six and we didn't care about being beaten by a GT2 car. We wanted that Le Mans class win, because that was why we were there - and why we still go there today."

Battling on with two drivers, 2009 Le Mans

O'Connell reckons he led a charmed life during his 10 years at Le Mans with Corvette Racing. In that time he notched up a remarkable eight class podiums, but he chooses the last of his three wins, scored with the C6.R GT1 car with Antonio Garcia and Magnussen, as his magic moment.

"Jan got sick at about 10pm at night and after that it was just Antonio and me to the end of the race," he says. "We didn't have any real opposition in those dying days of GT1, but it was a super-close fight with the sister car."

O'Connell and Garcia prevailed when the C6.R driven by Gavin, Beretta and Marcel Fassler hit gearbox problems in the closing stages.

"It was such a hard deal going back and forth with only one other driver," adds O'Connell. "We were doing doubles and triples, because that was the only way either of us was going to get any rest. It was old school."

Victory in the face of adversity, 2004 Le Mans

So drama-filled was Corvette Racing's 2004 Le Mans that it ran out of spares. Its cars finished 1-2 in sixth and eighth positions overall, led home by Gavin, Magnussen and Beretta, but it was a long haul for a team that had to raid parts from a show car on display in the old 'Village' area at Le Mans. That makes it special for Pratt because his operation builds the cars.

"There were so many incidents that year that we plain ran out of spares; I don't know why it was, but it seemed like the prototype drivers weren't giving our guys a lot of room," he recalls. "The show car was a dummy chassis, but it had real bodywork. I sent my wife up there with some of the guys to go get parts off it.

"I remember telling Olly not to crash when he got back in the car for the final time: we didn't have anything left to repair it with."

Magnussen remembers what he calls "a crazy race" with fond memories, too.

"That was my first win at Le Mans, which makes it special, but we also had to come back from something like six laps down," he recalls. "We were leading at midnight when one of the Audis [the Veloqx entry driven by Jamie Davies] put me in the wall out of the Ford Chicane. It was just past the pit entry, so I had to do a full lap with a damaged car to get back to the pits."

The Prodrive Ferrari squad that had vanquished the Corvettes in 2003 was out front before hitting problems. Tomas Enge brought the leading 550 Maranello he shared with Alain Menu and Peter Kox into the pits in the 20th hour with wheel-bearing issues.

"That problem cost them exactly the amount of time they were ahead," explains Magnussen. "We left the pits almost at the same time with me 20 metres ahead."