6 Hours of Monza: Corvette Champion - Porsche takes the podium.

Jul 10

By ending fourth behind three Porsche 911 RSR-19 but ahead of the Iron Dames and the ORT by TF team, Corvette Racing wins the FIA Endurance Trophy for LMGTE AM teams. Their drivers Ben Keating, Nicki Catsburg and Nico Varrone win the FIA Endurance Trophy for LMGTE AM Drivers. They now score more than double the points (145) of the Iron Dames (67) second in both Championships.

Safety Car fools Iron Dames

Polesitter Sarah Bovy pranced in the lead having lapped all her opponents by the second hour until the second interruption ( a few minutes later) to recover Vector Sport's ORECA from the barriers at Lesmo 2. She then needed to make an emergency stop during the safety car which forced her to pit again 8’ later to hand over the wheel to Gatting.

📷 © Luc Warnotte at 6 Hours of Monza: #85 Iron Dames Porsche 911 RSR-19.

Gatting could nevertheless maintain her car in P3 during her stint but another Safety Car, this time with about two hours to go, once more hampered the Dames’ progress. Despite that, Gatting handed over the car to Rahel Frey in fifth place in class which Frey kept until checkered flag.

For the Porsche teams Proton Competition (#77), Iron Lynx (#60) and GR Racing (#86), those safety car were a godsend because they had refuelled just before.

Three Porsche 911 RSR-19 locked out the podium.

Class victory went to Dempsey-Proton Racing with drivers Mikkel Pedersen, team owner Christian Ried and Works driver Julien Andlauer.

📷 © Luc Warnotte at 6 Hours of Monza: #77 Dempsey-Proton Racing Porsche 911 RSR-19.

Mikkel Pedersen (Porsche 911 RSR #77): “Everything simply fell into place today. I’m absolutely thrilled that we’re on the top of the podium. My teammates Christian Ried and Julien Andlauer did a fantastic job and the team ran a successful strategy. We’re having a fantastic day at Monza!”

Iron Lynx (#60 Porsche 911) clinched second place with Alessio Picariello, Matteo Cressoni and Claudio Schiavoni, followed by GR Racing (#86 Porsche 911) in third with Ben Barker, Michael Wainwright and Riccardo Pera.

📷 © Luc Warnotte at 6 Hours of Monza: #60 and #86 Porsche 911 RSR-19.

Alessio Picariello (Porsche 911 RSR #60): “In all honesty, this success was a bit unexpected – at the beginning, we had some bad luck with our strategy. But then, fortune turned in our favour because we managed to make our pit stop just in time before the safety car period. That put us back in a good position. We were firing on all cylinders and managed to stand our ground in the leading group afterwards. I’m elated to achieve this result at the Iron Lynx team’s home race.”

P4 and titles for Corvette Racing

Corvette Racing clinched the GTE Am Drivers and Teams titles in the FIA World Endurance Championship with a fourth-place finish for the trio of Nicky Catsburg, Ben Keating and Nico Varrone. The #33 Corvette C8.R team finished ahead of its closest championship competitors (Iron Dames and ORT by TF) to wrap up the program’s first title in WEC competition.

📷 © Luc Warnotte at 6 Hours of Monza: #33 Corvette C8.R.

Keating set the tone for the Corvette team early. He started sixth but picked up spots on consecutive laps to run third prior to a safety-car period at the 15-minute mark. The Corvette crew elected to bring the C8.R into pitlane for a fuel top-off. By the time Keating made his second stop at 80 minutes running, he had worked his way back up to second as the varying pit strategies came into view.

He gave way to Varrone just past the two-hour mark but a rare in-race mistake meant the C8.R was called in for a drive-through penalty due to speeding in the pitlane. Varrone slid back to sixth but steadily worked his way back to the lead with strong pace and the pit stop cycle. By the time his driving time was complete just prior to the four-hour mark, the C8.R ran third but less than four seconds from the leader.

Catsburg drove the final 92 minutes but was unable to make in-roads to the podium finishers as the C8.R carried 40 additional kilograms of “success ballast” in accordance with GTE Am sporting rules.

NICKY CATSBURG, #33 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R – FIA WEC GTE AM CHAMPION: “Honestly, this season might have been one of my nicest in motorsport. It has been so cool, right from the start. It was always very relaxed with not a lot of pressure. Somehow the results just kept coming. I cannot deny that we have a great car, a great team and we have an awesome lineup. But we still need to execute, and I feel like we did that really well. Today I feel like we should have come away with a podium. We got a little bit unlucky with some of the safety car situations, but we did great. It’s super, super cool to be able to call myself a World Champion. I think I had won it before with a team but not as a driver. So I’m really, really happy!”

BEN KEATING, NO. 33 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R – FIA WEC GTE AM CHAMPION: “I’ve said it over and over, but in this championship and in each one of the five races we’ve had, it has been a true team performance overall. You win as a team and you lose as a team, but we’ve also been lucky in quite a lot of places. It’s just been a magical season. Everyone kept talking about us needing to finish first or second in order to clinch the championship here. I kept saying it was more about where the 25 and 85 finished rather than where we finished. We weren’t really racing for that. We were racing to be as far up in the order as we possibly could be. We had a really good race. It’s been an amazing season. I keep on joking that because we’ve finished fourth, we get to lose 10 kilograms in success ballast! Now we can really start pushing hard because we don’t have to be conservative. Just kidding! It’s been a great season. I’m really proud of everyone on the Corvette Racing team.”

NICO VARRONE, NO. 33 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R – FIA WEC GTE AM CHAMPION: “This means quite a lot. It feels very weird at the moment but means so much. To say that we are World Champions is just an amazing feeling. I’ve been working for this since I was 8 years old and started driving karts. I didn’t imagine it was going to be so early. As Ben said, this was all teamwork all season. We’ve all done a great job – the three of us as teammates, the engineers and the pit crew has been amazing. We did a fantastic job. Today we weren’t racing for the win and couldn’t make it. But finishing fourth and sealing the title already with two rounds to go is just amazing.”