Kirchhoefer Getting Up to Speed Ahead of Factory Corvette Debut

Photo: AWA

Marvin Kirchhoefer said he was “quite impressed” with the first test in Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports’ Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R ahead of his factory debut with the team in this month’s IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season-opening Rolex 24 at Daytona.

The McLaren works driver on loan, who won last year’s Rolex 24 in the GTD class with customer squad AWA, took part in a multi-day outing with the Pratt Miller-run operation at Sebring International Raceway in mid-November.

It was followed up by a driver-in-the-loop simulator session at GM’s technical center in Concord, N.C. a few weeks ago.

Kirchhoefer was confirmed in November to be replacing Dani Juncadella as the team’s third driver in the No. 3 Corvette entry, which won the season-long GTD Pro class title last year with Antonio Garcia and Alexander Sims.

“It was really nice being back behind the wheel of the Corvette, so I really enjoyed the test,” he said. “I was generally quite impressed by the whole setup of the team.

“I got a nice welcome, too, from my teammates as well.

“I already knew Nicky [Castburg] from previous racing before, too. That was very nice and I really, really enjoyed working with them.

“Everyone has been very supportive and very helpful getting me up to speed within the team and getting reacquainted with the Corvette.”

Kirchhoefer said his time on the DIL sim was “quite interesting” given his relative lack of experience in state-of-the-art simulators.

“I haven’t been in a sim for quite some time,” he admitted. “It’s not something that I’m used to, I would say.

“When I was younger, I used to do quite some development back in the day for DTM but that was more than ten years ago so it’s been a bit of a break for me being in a sim. But I really enjoyed it.

“It was quite impressive with how dedicated everyone was working during those three days.

“The first day was about getting me into a groove and the second day Tommy [Milner] joined. There were quite a few nice bits of information that took from him.

“The feedback from the DiL model was very impressive. I mean, it’s always a bit more difficult to get a feeling for adjustments in a simulator than in the actual real car because you are limited to only a few feedbacks that you can take.

“Most of them will be like visual feedbacks… you don’t really have the tire sound or the feeling of the tire scrubbing and all that. It’s not easy to really get it right every time but I must say overall that it has been very good and very positive… good preparation for the Rolex coming up in a couple of weeks.

“Hopefully we’ve done our parts and our work well and can make it a good Daytona 24 race.”

The team’s sister No. 4 Corvette will take part in the Florida endurance classic with the unchanged lineup of Catsburg, Milner and Nico Varrone, who will dovetail a season of FIA Formula 2 with a three-race Michelin Endurance Cup program with the team.

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John