The factory Chevrolet team will field a solo Corvette C8.R in the seven-round series in the WEC’s remaining GT class after the axing of GTE Pro, in which it is competing this year with Nick Tandy and Tommy Milner.
The drivers announced for the pro-am car so far are Nicky Catsburg, who moves into a full-time seat after three seasons driving for Corvette Racing in the endurance events, and top bronze-rated driver Ben Keating, who leads the GTE Am points this campaign with the TF Sport Aston Martin squad.
The third member of the team, most likely a silver-ranked driver, will be revealed at a later date.
The move into GTE Am was described by Chevrolet as a “transitioning”, which hints at its forthcoming involvement in customer racing when the new Corvette GT3 car comes on stream in 2024.
The General Motors brand’s announcement of a continued full-time presence in the WEC in the final year of eligibility for the C8.R GTE came as part of the unveiling of a multi-pronged GT programme for 2023.
It will again field a single C8.R in the IMSA SportsCar Championship’s GT Daytona Pro class for Antonio Garcia and Jordan Taylor, runners-up in this year’s points.
Next year will be the final season in which the C8.R is allowed to compete in modified form against GT3 machinery in GTD Pro, which took over from GT Le Mans in IMSA for this season.
The final strand of Chevrolet’s GT programme masterminded by Pratt & Miller in 2023 will be development of the new Corvette GT3, which ran for the first time last month.
Milner will spearhead development of a car named the Z06 GT3.R and will also join Garcia and Taylor in the solo C8.R entered in the IMSA enduros at Daytona, Sebring and Road Atlanta.
The GT3.R ran for the first time at GM’s Milford proving ground in late September before the test programme moved to Mid-Ohio this month for running on a proper race circuit.
The announcement from Chevrolet makes no mention of Tandy, who joined the marque ahead of the 2021 season.
His absence from its plans appears to provide the final confirmation that he will leave Chevy to return to Porsche, with which he won Le Mans overall in 2015 in the middle of an eight-year stint as a factory driver.
Porsche has so far announced eight drivers for its two Penske-run programmes with the 963 LMDh prototype across the WEC and IMSA, which leaves two full-time vacancies.
Laura Klauser, GM sportscar programmme manager said: “We learned a great deal this year about running dual programmes in both IMSA and the FIA WEC – all of which will benefit the Corvette brand going forward.
“In IMSA, we will return to GTD Pro against a very competitive group of manufacturers while laying the groundwork for the Corvette Z06 GT3.R.
“Similarly, Corvette Racing’s FIA WEC programme allows us the opportunity to continue growing the global presence of Corvette in a world championship.”
Catsburg said that he is “super-happy and proud that I can call myself a full-time Corvette driver”, which he described as his goal since joining the team in 2020.
Keating, who owns a chain of car dealerships, revealed that he’d had the ambition “to race a Corvette for a long time and have been chipping away to make this happen because I want to race what I sell”.
Milner described his 2023 role focussed on testing “as something different” and that “it’s a good thing to do different things every now and then”.
