As the GT3 homologation deadline for the 2024 racing season draws near, General Motors and Pratt Miller Engineering are working feverishly to finalize details of the Corvette Z06 GT3.R that will compete, at a minimum, in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and FIA World Endurance Championship next year. Wind tunnel and dyno testing is scheduled to begin in the weeks after Le Mans, and full homologation is expected by October. But there are many things to be discovered before then, and even after.
“It was definitely a benefit that we started our development so early; we were on track last fall,” explains Corvette Z06 GT3.R Program Manager Christie Bagne. “So by the time we hit the end of last year, we already knew the primary aero concept that we’d be moving forward with and things like that. Then we were able to move on very quickly onto things like different damper evaluation. So we’re at the point where we’re working on the fine tuning, and that was definitely enabled by starting that development process last fall.”
The engineering team has been primarily testing on the tire it knows — the same Michelin tire it races on in the WeatherTech Championship. But before and after homologation, they’ll be working to g ather as much information as they can on how the car works on different tires so they can have the information for customers racing in different series around the world
“We’re sourcing Goodyear and Pirelli and making sure that that’s worked into our development testing plan as well,” says Bagne. “We want to get well ahead of it in terms of testing different tires, testing different configurations for different series. We’ve developed a great platform with this car, where the current car was developed very much to run on a Michelin tire at IMSA tracks and Le Mans primarily, the GT3 car has been optimized for a wider operating window. So we expect to have quite a bit of success in terms of being able to have the workability to come up with the best possible setups for the different tires, and then provide those learnings to our customer at the onset, so that when they hit the grid with their car, they’ve already benefited from all the testing that we’ve done in advance.”
The priority will be having cars ready for IMSA and WEC competition next season. But while GM wants to have cars for customers to race worldwide, including major GT endurance races such as the 24 Hours of Spa and the 24 Hours of Nurburgring — where Bagne and the key members of the engineering team spent last weekend getting the lay of the land — the aim is not to turn out a huge volume of Z06 GT3.Rs. GM will build at least 20, but it doesn’t plan to churn out hundreds of GT3 cars like some other manufacturers. Because of that, the manufacturer expects to be able to deliver a better customer support experience with their partner PME, Bagne notes.
“We realize that this is our first time launching a proper global customer racing program with the Corvette. So because we’re low volume, and we intend to have the support be a differentiator, the customers will have world-cl ass access to us as the manufacturer representatives, but then also the technical engineering support.