Racing in U.S. “Whole New Ballgame” for Eastwood

Competing in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s LMP2 class will be “a whole new ballgame” for Charlie Eastwood, who is looking forward to discovering new U.S. circuits after several years of racing the Oreca 07 Gibson in Europe.

Eastwood, a Corvette factory driver, will link up with Tower Motorsports at this weekend’s Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring to form his season-long partnership with Bronze-rated driver John Farano after competing in the Rolex 24 at Daytona with AWA.

The Belfast native is set to embark on his first WeatherTech Championship campaign, having previously only competed at Daytona on three separate occasions in the GTD class.

“It’s a whole new ballgame,” Eastwood told Sportscar365.

“Having that opportunity to go and do that in LMP2 is one that I obviously had to take. GM and Corvette were super good with it that they let me go and do it.

“It’s obviously in both of our interests if I knew all the tracks, I’m hopefully going to be able to add more value if I needed to step into the Corvette in IMSA as well. So it should be good.”

When he joins Tower at Sebring, Eastwood is already effectively out of contention for the LMP2 title because he drove an AWA Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R at Daytona instead, being replaced aboard the No. 8 Oreca 07 Gibson by Ferdinand Habsburg.

“It was in the pipeline to do it all, and then things changed with AWA,” Eastwood revealed.

“To be honest, on the Corvette side, getting a 24-hour race under my belt before [the WEC season opener in Qatar], I thought it was going to be very good prep.

“I know it’s difficult when you don’t end up doing the full championship, because I [will] miss one sprint race as well because of WEC in Brazil.

“Ultimately, it’s trying to just get as much experience out there as possible, learn all the new tracks. I’ve only been to Daytona and Sebring in America, so I haven’t done a lot of these other [tracks].

“We’ve got a good chance. I was in Sebring last week with [Tower] as well, doing a couple of days [of] testing, so it went well.

“They seem like a really good bunch and looking forward to trying some of these new tracks that everyone talks about.”

When asked which race he is particularly looking forward to, Eastwood named the season finale at Motul Petit Le Mans.

“When I knew I was in the pipeline to be doing it, I watched literally the whole race online last year,” he said.

“The track seems insane, but the race itself just seems so intense in every category. There’s so much traffic and passing, the lap is short, the lap is mental.

“Those type of races where you have to think around the traffic versus a clean lap, you could be one or two seconds slower.

“I love those sort of races where you really have to think three, four corners ahead in the traffic to back off to make sure you catch them in the right places.”

The prospect of being out of contention for the championship already doesn’t weigh heavy on Eastwood’s shoulders, who said he will make it a goal to try and help Farano secure a second LMP2 title.

“I think the big thing in IMSA is yes, Daytona’s the biggest race, Sebring is massive race, Petit is a massive race,” he said.

“I may not be able to win IMSA as a championship, [but] winning these iconic races is still huge.

“And then with that, if I can obviously help, I think it’s a good thing for John and the team to go and try and get the driver’s championship or the team championship again. That’s ultimately the goal as well.”