Jan Magnussen believes that Corvette Racing’s two standalone appearances at the American rounds of the FIA World Endurance Championship will play an important role in getting the team prepared for this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans.
The Danish veteran is sharing the #63 Corvette C8.R with Mike Rockenfeller for the new car’s WEC debut at this Sunday’s Lone Star Le Mans, the fifth round of the 2019/20 WEC season and will also partner with the German at the 1000 Miles of Sebring in March.
The American manufacturer is once again aiming to take on the French endurance classic with a two-car effort this summer, giving the mid-engined C8.R its Le Mans debut. Magnussen believes that the races in Texas and Florida will play a key role and getting the team ready for the big race.
“Every time we go out, we learn something new,” he spoke at the pre-race press conference. “Like I said, it’s a brand new car that we need to try and get our head around and try and learn about as much as possible.
It’s super valuable for Corvette Racing to do these two races, especially in preparation for Le Mans, and that’s basically what this is all about: to try and perform well at Le Mans and learn as much as we can.”
Magnussen went on to explain that the car he will race on Sunday is a brand new car, and that he has not been in a race-ready version of the C8.R before this weekend, despite being heavily involved in the development of Corvette’s new challenger.
“It’s the first time in the race car,” he continued. “I did quite a bit of running last year with the test car. It’s a fantastic upgrade. It’s very early in the program and we’re learning a lot, all the time.
This is a brand new car. It was just shook down at Sebring last week. So we had a few issues to deal with this morning, and hopefully we’ve gone through that and we can start on the proper program to try and extract some speed.
But it’s great to be here, fantastic opportunity and we’ll just have to wait and see what we have.”
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