OLIVER GAVIN
A five-time American Le Mans Series class champion and five-time 12 Hours of Sebring class winner – not to mention the GT ace’s five 24 Hours of Le Mans class wins.

The complete package is found within the Englishman who turned his attention to the States in the early 2000s and continues to serve up championships and the grandest of endurance victories for Corvette Racing.

If I think of IMSA, I think of the headquarters at Daytona. And when I think about Daytona, I think about the GT Le Mans class win we had there in 2016. It was an absolutely unbelievable race with a titanic finish between Antonio Garcia in the other Corvette and I for those last 10, 12 laps…really racing as hard as we could to the finish. It summed up Corvette Racing and the way everyone goes about their work within the team.

We try to get every last thousandth of a second out of the cars – the strategy that goes into it, the work behind the scenes, and the preparation of the cars and team well before the start of a race week. You can filter all that down through the last 10 laps.



Anyway, when someone says IMSA to me, that 2016 finish is what I think about. It was special for me of course, and a dream finish for the team. I remember getting out of the car and seeing the smile on Gary Pratt’s face.

When I first started racing in the UK, the Daytona 24 Hours was about the likes of Derek Bell, Bob Wollek, James Weaver, Andy Wallace, the TWR Jaguars, the amazing GTP cars. The racing was fast, aggressive and tough. You would see guys pouring themselves out of a car after a stint, soaked in sweat from giving it everything. The cars were absolute brutes to drive, but they were amazing to watch – the raw power, the downforce, the size of the tires.

To get the most out of those cars at that time, you had to get in and drive them very, very hard. It definitely was a golden era looking back on it. In fact, it was definitely one of the motivations for me to come to the United States and start competing over here.