Corvette Has Made “Big Steps” in Z06 GT3.R’s Reliability

Photo: Fabian Lagunas/SRO

General Motors and Pratt Miller have made “big steps” in the reliability of the Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R in recent months according to program manger Christie Bagne, who confirmed the recent application of “erratum” fixes per FIA GT3 regulations.

The new-for-2024 machine, Chevrolet’s first customer GT3 car, made its competition debut in January’s IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season-opening Rolex 24 at Daytona with mixed results and have since been rolled out to customers in both the FIA World Endurance Championship and Fanatec GT World Challenge America powered by AWS.

While reliability woes dampened several strong runs by the factory-supported Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports team in early season WeatherTech Championship races, customer squad DXDT Racing broke through to give the car its first win in global competition in last weekend’s Fanatec GT America round at Circuit of The Americas.

“Everybody saw the rollout at the Rolex was challenging,” Bagne told Sportscar365. “It is for every manufacturer with a new car; we’ve seen that in the past.

“It was the same for us, but I’d say the team at both Pratt Miller and General Motors and our customer teams have all stepped up to resolve issues as quickly as possible.

“The teams have been patient with us in terms of updating the cars with TSBs (technical service bulletins) and things like that so we have a reliable and competitive platform.”

Bagne declined to go into details on the extent of updates since the car’s debut but acknowledged the previously publicized diffuser reinforcement that led to a penalty following qualifying at Sebring.

“It was a tiny piece of carbon reinforcement on the non-active side of the diffuser. It was truly reliability as opposed to performance,” she said.

“I won’t dive into the specific erratums but we’ve had some updates.

“You can see the team is flat out in terms of making sure documentation is with the FIA, with IMSA, with SRO, with the ACO and doing a good job with that.

“People have seen the car progress through the last few races. We had some of the pull-away launch challenges at Daytona, which people saw.

“Looking at it [at COTA], the car pulls away smooth every time and now looks great.

“It’s just been huge progress by the team. I’m really proud of the way that everybody has banded together.”

Bagne said additional updates will be in place for the pair of TF Sport-run Corvettes at next month’s 24 Hours of Le Mans.

“We’ve made big steps in terms of the reliability of the car,” she said. “We’re going to continue to make the most robust car possible.

“We have several updates coming in before Le Mans, all targeted at reliability of the platform, and then we can shift focus more to the expansion and long-term performance strategy.”

DXDT Has Benefitted From Car’s Early Lessons

Bagne said DXDT, which was the third and most recent customer team to roll out its Z06 GT3.Rs earlier this month, debuted with the most knowledge of the car given GM and Pratt Miller’s open-book approach.

“Even though we’ve just launched with DXDT Racing, we’ve had the opportunity to include them in the overall program since we first made the commitment to selling cars to them,” she said.

“They were at our test last year, they’ve been in our all-customer meetings, they’ve been over to our shop, helping assemble their own cars to get familiar with them.

“Through that whole process, we’ve really built a strong relationship, which I think helped our debut be successful.”

When asked if the David Askew-owned DXDT squad perhaps came in the best prepared given the amount of race data gathered from other Corvette teams, Bagne agreed that it’s likely the case.

She added: “It’s still a new car but they came with a really strong background racing the Mercedes GT3 car. They came with a strong background in this series.

“It’s still a new car; there’s always still going to be a learning curve but they definitely benefitted from the learnings from IMSA and WEC debuts.”

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