When did Chevy start factory racing a Corvette? – Jalopnik

The Chevrolet Corvette wasn’t really a sports car when it was introduced in 1953, and GM almost shut down the program in its early stages. But the ‘Vette got its first V8 in 1955, and by 1960, thanks to fuel injection, the engine could deliver both 315 horses and the kind of smile-inducing thrills people would expect from the Corvette name.

The same year, the car also made its first trip to Le Mans, when a team of three Corvettes led by Zora Arkus-Duntov, Chevy’s director of high performance, made its debut at the iconic 24-hour endurance event, taking a class victory. Still, the team received no official support from Chevrolet, despite Arkus-Duntov’s presence, and the event failed to become a springboard for Corvette’s factory-backed racing. That wouldn’t happen for another four decades, when Chevrolet formed the first factory racing team for the Chevrolet Corvette in 1999.

Why the delay? Part of it was due to the terrible tragedy during the 1955 run of Le Mans: Mercedes-Benz driver Pierre Levegh’s car crashed into a slower-moving entrance and left the track, exploding into flames as it reached the crowd and killing 83 people. Mercedes stopped racing completely, and other automakers, including Chevrolet, also withdrew their motorsports efforts. Another result of the disaster, closer to home, was that in 1957 the Automobile Manufacturers Association effectively ended official motorsport support of American car manufacturers.

Of course, that hasn’t slowed backdoor factory support for racing, whether it was Arkus-Duntov lending his expertise to Briggs Cunningham’s Le Mans Corvette or, in the mid-1990s, Doug Ripple asking GM for help in bringing his own privately owned Corvette racer to competition. A constant across many of these programs, however, was GM’s Doug Fehan, a former race car driver who convinced GM executives to approve a full-fledged, factory-backed Corvette team in 1996.

The crux of the matter was that GM’s involvement in multiple motorsports endeavors – official or otherwise – spread the automaker’s resources too thinly. Fehan believed that by focusing on a single program, such as bringing the Corvette to the American Le Mans Series, exceptional success would also be within reach. And Fehan meant what he said about bringing together all of GM’s resources. His dream team would be supported not only by GM engineering, but by every GM department that had a hand in its success, including getting buy-in from the marketing team for maximum “win on Sunday, sell on Monday” promotion.

Fehan even takes credit for choosing Corvette’s striking yellow paint schemes. The original look was a silver and black design that was actually used at the team’s first race, the 1999 Rolex 24 at Daytona, where the No. 2 Corvette, driven by Ron Fellows, Chris Kneifel and John Paul Jr., finished third in class. Corvette Racing would win its class in 2001, 2015, 2016 and 2021. A privately entered Corvette also won its class there in 2025.

Showing just how quickly Corvette Racing got up to speed, the team’s third year of competition, 2001, saw it add to its Daytona accolades by winning a class championship in the American Le Mans Series, the first of eight consecutive manufacturers’ titles that included twelve straight race wins from 2005 through 2006 – then a separate streak of 25 straight wins from 2007 through 2009. At Le Mans itself, factory-backed Corvettes have took the checkered flag for their class nine times.

More recently, Corvette Racing has competed in the World Endurance Championship, where it captured a class title in 2023, and in the International Motor Sports Association’s WeatherTech SportsCar Championship series, in which – for the 2025 season – the team was part of a triple play: Corvette Racing won the team championship for its class, Chevrolet won the manufacturers’ title and Antonio Garcia and Alexander Sims of the No. 3 car shared driver honors.

Interested in becoming part of the team yourself? You can take your own example from one of those IMSA championship winners – Chevrolet’s first Corvette GT3 racer, the Z06 GT3.R – for amateur racing. (According to the brand, it’s the first Chevy race car ever sold to both professional and amateur racers.) That said, not just anyone is eligible for ownership, as Corvette Racing notes that Chevy will only sell them “to racing teams uniquely equipped to showcase the car on the track during competition use.” Also needed: about $735,000.