Jonny Edgar believes that getting any points in Sunday’s 6 Hours of Circuit of The Americas would be considered a win for the No. 33 TF Sport Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R crew, which has been weighed down by Success Ballast amid its unique points lead in the LMGT3 class of the FIA World Endurance Championship.
Edgar and co-drivers Nicky Catsburg and Ben Keating hold the top three positions in the class championship.
This is because Catsburg missed the most recent round in Sao Paulo due to his IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GTD Pro commitments with Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports and Keating was forced out of the opening two rounds of the season due to a broken elbow from a pre-season biking accident.
The FIA Silver-rated driver holds a four-point lead over Catsburg, with Keating 22 points behind, although five markers ahead of the No. 91 Manthey Porsche 911 GT3 R Evo trio of Richard Lietz, Riccardo Pera and Yasser Shahin, who are the team’s closest competitor.
“Before we raced in Le Mans, Ben said this is what we wanted to do, was to be 1-2-3,” Edgar told Sportscar365.
“It would be great if it happened. I think it will be difficult. I have quite a nice lead and Nicky is close but with Ben obviously missing the first two races.”
Keating added: “It would be really hard for me to get third. Theoretically it can still happen.”
“I’m just glad that we’re going to Barcelona and Monza. They’re only [normal] point races instead of a double or one-and-a-half. It makes Le Mans count that much more.”
“But I would also say that Barcelona is a really high deg track and I think the Corvette is better on tires than some of the other cars in the class.”
“Even though we’ll all suffer with deg, I think it will be better for us than some others, or I hope so. I love Monza. I’m excited to go to a track that I enjoy so much.”
This weekend, the car is carrying 36 kgs of Success Ballast, aside from any potential Balance of Performance changes, which are held behind the curtain by organizers.
“The weight is a big deal here, more so than other tracks we go to,” said Keating. “Every car other than the Mustang got weight added.”
“It’s going to be a challenging weekend for us. But we’ll do the best we can with what we’ve got.”
Catsburg set the 16th quickest time in class in Friday’s opening Free Practice, out of the 18 cars in class, while Edgar made an improvement to end up 12th in FP2.
“The car honestly felt good,” he said. “I think it felt a lot better than where I remember we started last year.”
“We were all pretty happy. There’s small improvements we need to make on the car balance but honestly it was pretty good. Everyone’s happy.
“It just seems like it’s going to be one of the more difficult weekend. We’re hoping for a clean race and I think any points would be kind of a win this weekend. That’s the aim.”
When asked who he thinks are their main championship contenders, Edgar not only pointed to Manthey but also the likes of WRT, AF Corse, as well as its sister car, heading into the second half of the season.
“There’s a lot of cars but I’d say probably the Manthey car,” he said. “They’re the closest to us in points and we’ve seen over the last two years, they always seem to do a good job at consistently scoring.”
“I think that’s where they are really strong, in scoring good points each week.
“There’s a lot of cars relatively close. One [bad] race and the gap is gone, so I think everyone is a threat and all the cars around have great lineups and are great teams.
“The sister car is also close in a joint third. The WRT car is a strong lineup too, and also the AF cars. They’re all great teams, lineups.
“It’s hard to beat everyone but we have quite a nice lead, so I think we need to try to keep that.”
