Corvette Racing · 2005–2013

Corvette C6.R

The C6.R had two completely different careers in one lifetime. First it dominated the top GT class so thoroughly that the competition simply stopped showing up. Then, when that class died, the team rebuilt the car around a smaller engine and went and won all over again.

In its GT1 years the C6.R was almost absurdly dominant. Corvette Racing took the driver, team, and manufacturer championships every season from 2005 through 2008, reeling off streaks — twelve straight wins in 2005–06, then twenty-five straight across 2007–09 — that flattened rivals like the Aston Martin DBR9. At Le Mans the big cars won their class in 2005 and again in 2006.

Then the ground shifted. The GT1 category was collapsing across the sport, so for 2009 Corvette Racing made a bold mid-life change: it moved the C6.R down into the ultra-competitive GT2 class (later GTE), trading the monster 7.0-liter GT1 engine for a smaller 5.5-liter and diving into a shark tank full of Ferraris, Porsches, and BMWs. The car won its very first Le Mans in the new class in 2009, and again in 2011.

Doing it twice — winning a class into extinction, then dropping down a level and winning there too — is what elevated Corvette Racing from “successful” to one of the genuinely great factory programs. The drivers who carried it, Oliver Gavin, Olivier Beretta, and Jan Magnussen, would keep the yellow cars at the front into the next generation.