Corvette’s Z06 GT3.R Just Won Its First IMSA Race

Corvette's newest race car has claimed its first victory in North America's IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.

Corvette's racing program has made a giant shift for 2024, supplying cars to customer teams rather than running cars under the factory flag, as it had since 1999. New for this season, the car itself is built to a different rule set than its predecessor, the C8.R: In order to be compatible for the maximum number of series around the world, the racing version of the Z06 is built to GT3 specifications. These rules were adopted by IMSA in 2022 (Corvette received a waiver from to run the prior car for the 2023 season). In IMSA, the Z06 GT3.R competes in the GTD Pro class, reserved for production-based sports cars piloted by full-time, or pro, drivers, and in GTD, which requires at least one amateur driver in the lineup.

"We've been knocking on the door for a long time," says Antonio Garcia, a longtime Corvette factory driver who piloted the winning #3 car for Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports. The model also took home second place this weekend, with the #4 Pratt Miller Car of Tommy Milner and Nicky Catsburg finishing 0.408 seconds behind the #3 at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park.

A little over halfway through the season, the Pratt Miller Corvettes have lead in five races and gotten to the podium twice. In May, at Laguna Seca during the Motul Course de Monterey Powered by Hyundai N, the #4 car driven by Milner and Catsburg finished third; the last weekend in June, at Watkins Glen, the other car, driven by Garcia and Sims, finished third.

This weekend, Garcia says, "we finally got it to happen."

Racing fans will know that this isn't the first win ever for the Z06 GT3.R. That was in May, at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, in the Fanatec GT World Challenge powered by AWS. That car, wearing the number #63, wasn't fielded by Pratt Miller, but by DXDT Racing, based in North Carolina, and it was driven by Tommy Milner and Alec Udell. Milner drove for Corvette Racing from 2011 to the end of the factory program. He and Antonio Garcia drove a C6.R to a class win at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2011. Milner also helped develop the Z06 GT3.R.

The yellow Corvettes will look to build on their momentum in a few weeks, when they will be racing at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, during the IMSA SportsCar Weekend.

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don't miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.