Eastwood’s podium in iconic Le Mans 24 Hour race
TF Sport’s No. 81 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R of Charlie Eastwood, Rui Andrade and Tom Van Rompuy finished on the LMGT3 podium Sunday in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the first podium finish in the world’s biggest sports car racing for the Corvette GT3 program.
Charlie Eastwood and Rui Andrade qualified on the third row of a stacked LMGT3 field for the weekend’s 24 Hours of Le Mans. It cemented the No. 81 Corvette among the lead cars at the start of Saturday’s race, which featured a massive field of 24 GT3 cars representing nine manufacturers. Eastwood and Andrade got the chance in Hyperpole after teammate Tom Van Rompuy advanced from Wednesday’s initial qualifying session in fifth place.
CHARLIE EASTWOOD, NO. 81 CHEVROLET CORVETTE Z06 GT3.R – STARTING SIXTH IN LMGT3:
“Clearly, the top couple of cars are super-fast, but we haven’t been the sixth-fastest cars since we’ve been here all week. So again, I think all three of us did a really good job… Tom yesterday to get us in and continue on and then Rui had a really good last lap there. In the mix for sure. We’re not the fastest but definitely not the slowest. We can definitely fight from there. The Corvette and the team have been super-faultless. We’ve been tuning the car more and more to a really good place. As we have in the last couple of races, we have executed really well up to now. We just need to make sure we continue to execute this weekend as well.”
Corvette moved forward from the early hours of the race. The only step wrong for the No. 81 was a drive-through penalty in the seventh hour. Otherwise the race almost ran like clockwork for the lead TF Corvette, which moved into the lead just past the halfway point and was part of a back-and-forth fight for an LMGT3 podium finish.
CHARLIE EASTWOOD, NO. 81 CORVETTE Z06 GT3.R:
“Amazing result. A podium at Le Mans and my first podium this season with Corvette. Not a bad place for it. As it has been for so many races last year and this year, not one thing went wrong. Every pit stop was perfect, not a single scratch on the car for 24 hours. We didn’t have the pace but we ended up on the podium because of that. Once we do have the pace of some of the other cars we’re going to win some races pretty comfortably. Amazing result for the team and delighted to finish my first 24-hour event with Corvette on the podium.”
