“Learning Weekend” for Andretti Autosport Aston GTD Effort

Photo: Jake Galstad/IMSA

Jarett Andretti is approaching the Motul Course de Monterey at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca as a “learning weekend” for Andretti Autosport in its GTD class debut

The LMP3 race-winning operation has shifted gears to the GT ranks this weekend and for the majority of the remaining IMSA WeatherTech Sprint Cup races, ahead of a planned full season GTD program next year.

While not initially having planned to make the trip to California, Andretti, who is sharing the No. 94 Aston Martin Vantage GT3 with Gabby Chaves, told Sportscar365 that there were a number of factors that went into the Laguna debut.

“We were looking at the schedule and were like, ‘Well, we’ve never been to Laguna. It might be a good place to get started because we’re going to run the full season next year, we want to make sure that we’ve been to some of these places,'” Andretti explained.

“We were expecting the repave to have happened as well. It was one of those things where, ‘We’ll go there, the repave happened, we’ll be set up for next year.’ And then obviously the repave didn’t happen.

“But as we look at the schedule from the middle of July, you run Lime Rock, Road America, VIR and Indy in like an eight-week period.

“If we had any holes in the program, it would have been hard to patch them in that time.

“Now we know what we don’t know. We’ll run and we’ll see where we run. I think we’re keeping the expectations in line for the weekend and we’ll be set up better for that mid-summer swing.”

Andretti said they’re planning to contest all Sprint Cup rounds this season except for Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, with its LMP3 program returning for the two remaining Michelin Endurance Cup races at Watkins Glen International and Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.

It comes amid the recent news that the LMP3 class would be dropped from the WeatherTech Championship at the end of the season.

“I’d want to say that I knew what was going on and I want to take full credit for it but I wanted to go GT racing,” Andretti said. “LMP3 was always a stop-gap to go GT racing.

“I got really lucky with that as well because I was going to do Prototype Challenge and then they moved [LMP3] into WeatherTech and I was like, ‘Oh I’m sitting with a car that can go WeatherTech [Championship] racing.’

“They say it’s better to be lucky than good and I think I’ve been lucky more than a couple of times with these decisions.”

Andretti explained that the decision to go with an Aston Martin, made prior to Andretti Autosport’s purchase into Wayne Taylor Racing, was initiated by an anonymous car owner.

He said: “I met an individual that basically said, ‘I ordered an Aston and I want you to run the car.’ This was a year ago this weekend.

“Again, it’s making me look smarter than I am because the Aston obviously won at Daytona, they won the [GTD] championship [in 2022] and have won a lot of big races and they’ve been great to work with.

“But that’s just the way it worked out.”

With only a two-day test at Virginia International Raceway prior to this event, Andretti said they have realistic expectations in the GTD debut outing.

“It’s just a learning weekend,” he said. “I’ve never been to Laguna. Most of the guys haven’t been to Laguna. I’ve done one other GT3 race, at the [Indianapolis] 8 Hour.

“Gabby, this is his first GT3 race. When we go to the prototype races, we expect to be in the fight.

“When we come here, I think it would be foolish of us to think that all these teams that have been doing it forever, and we’re going to show up and be straight in with them.

“We expect to run good and we expect to hopefully be good on the [pit] lane, learn as much as we can and be able to be prepared for Lime Rock and the other mid-summer races.

“Anything more than that is really icing on the cake.”

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