Juncadella: Corvette “Looking Good” to Claw Back Title Ground

Daniel Juncadella says that the TF Sport Corvette team is “looking good” to make up lost ground in this year’s FIA World Endurance Championship LMGT3 title race after an encouraging opening day of practice at the Circuit of The Americas.

The No. 33 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R that Juncadella shares with Jonny Edgar and Ben Keating was fastest in Friday’s first session, with the Spanish driver’s best time standing as the sixth-best in the category across the day.

It follows a difficult run of races for the No. 33 side of the TF Sport garage, which hasn’t scored a top-five since its class victory in the season-opening Qatar 1812km.

Despite that, Juncadella and his co-drivers remain third in the LMGT3 standings with a 23-point deficit to make up to the championship-leading Manthey No. 92 Porsche crew of Richard Lietz, Ryan Hardwick and Riccardo Pera.

“Already before coming here, it was looking good,” Juncadella told Sportscar365. “We were good here last year and I think the track really suits this car, a lot of long corners where the aero platform us important and the Corvette is strong.

“We expected to be strong, and it has been going well so far. We are looking good.

“McLaren and Porsche also look strong, although the championship leader [No. 92 Manthey Porsche] is carrying 30 kg more than we are, which should help us.

“We need to catch up to stay in the championship fight, so it’s an important race for us. We need to catch up to Porsche and Ferrari, so hopefully we can do that.”

As well as coming at a critical juncture in the championship battle, this weekend’s Lone Star Le Mans is also significant for the No. 33 crew, being the home race for both the Corvette brand and Texas native Keating.

“It’s Ben’s home race, I know he has a lot of guests here, and it’s a pretty special event for Corvette,” said Juncadella. “I had my first test in a Corvette here two years when I first signed for this project, so it’s also special for me.

“Last year we had a lot of pace but we couldn’t translate that into a result, so hopefully this time around will be different.”

Although confident of a strong showing at COTA, Juncadella admitted that the use of the new Goodyear Eagle Hard tire for this weekend is unlikely to play to Corvette’s strengths.

“We are usually pretty good in terms of degradation compared to others, so in this sense the Medium tire would give us a bigger offset to the competition,” he said.

“There is very little degradation compared to last year even though it is very hot. It’s more like thermal degradation rather than actual wear.

“I would rather have the Medium as I think it suits our car better, but it’s ok.”

Juncadella added he believes that the remaining circuits of the season, Fuji Speedway and Bahrain, are also likely to be strong venues for Corvette as the GM marque seeks to replicate its 2023 GTE-Am title triumph in the second year of the LMGT3 class.

“Fuji was good for us last year, and Bahrain was also strong, so they are two more weekends where should be decent,” he said. “I wouldn’t say there was one track that didn’t suit us this year, it’s just sometimes you are relying on BoP numbers and so on.

“If we have a chance to fight, we should be good at Fuji and Bahrain, but there were some races this year like Spa where we just participated.

“We don’t want that, but I also think nobody wants that, so we trust the process.”