# 3 Corvette survives to finish 5th at IMSA Petit Le Mans finale
Starting from 2nd and 3rd on Saturday Oct 12, the Pratt & Miller team had high hopes at Road Atlanta, where winning this 10-hour endurance race has proved elusive. Their # 3 Z06 GT3.R had already survived an incident during Thursday night practice to repair heavy damage to the right rear with welding going on into Friday morning.
Things were looking up with two hours to go for Antonio Garcia, Alexander Sims & Danny Juncadella in the # 3. While top speed was not the best, saving on fuel and good track position gave them a chance to win.
Things turned down when Garcia felt his brake pedal go soft, a caliper problem that took 2 extra pit stops to fix, dropping the car to finish 5th.
Things were also looking good for Tommy Milner, Nicky Catsburg and Earl Bamber in the # 4 until mayhem and carnage took their toll in a game of “dodgeball” among a jam-packed field of 54 cars in 4 different classes on the 2.74-mile circuit.
Ben Keating, who secured the 2023 WEC championship driving a Corvette is shown above apologizing after his United Autosports LMP2 Oreca got slammed into Tommy Milner.
A front-row start was wasted by 50 laps, the time it took to repair heavy damage to both ends of the # 4, dropping it all the way down to 12th in GTD PRO at the finish.
Orei Fadini, Matt Bell & Lars Kern in the # 13 AWA team Z06 GT3.R finished 12th in GTD which was disappointing compared with better results coming into the finale.
The AO Racing Team # 77 Porsche 911 (992) GT3.R with 3 victories during the season won the 2024 GTD PRO championship but not without a scare for time lost to fix an electrical problem in the steering wheel.
The Iron Lynx team # 19 Lambo Huracan GT3 Evo 2 seemingly came out of nowhere to win the race.
All was not lost for General Motors as the # 01 GTP of Chip Ganassi’s Cadillac Racing Team won in its farewell race.
Pratt & Miller intends to do much better next year starting at Daytona with both Corvettes and a rumored LMP2 car.
Photos thanks to Kevin Bowman
