Alexander Sims ahead of Petit Le Mans

IMSA

Oct 3

Corvette Z06 GT3.R driver Alexander Sims met with members of the media Wednesday afternoon to discuss next weekend’s Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta. Sims and Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports teammate Antonio Garcia lead IMSA’s GTD PRO championship in the #3 Corvette.

📷 © Luc Warnotte at Daytona. #3 Corvette Z06 GT3.R.

YOU HEAD INTO THIS RACE LEADING THE CHAMPIONSHIP IN A VERY TIGHT BATTLE. HOW DO YOU ATTACK THIS RACE AND WHAT'S IT GOING TO TAKE TO GET ANOTHER CHAMPIONSHIP?

“Well, beating the Ferrari, beating Albert (Costa) is the main aim for us and having a clean race. It's always a huge challenge at Petit to have a clean race with the multi-class racing that we have and the track type at Road Atlanta. There are so many opportunities for various bits of mayhem to unfold so the first priority is to try and stay out of that through to the end of the race and then be in the fight and see where we get to. I’m looking forward to it. It's always a really special way to end the year at Petit Le Mans. It's always a great race.”

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON TWO GT RACES INTO IMSA'S MORE STRICT PROTOCOL WITH DRIVING STANDARDS AND PENALTIES? ARE YOU HAPPY WITH HOW IT'S GONE?

“Honestly, I'm quite happy with it. I think that the rules are there to be respected. Everyone can make mistakes and that happens, but there has certainly been a lot of racing in the near past that was not just people making mistakes; it was people knowingly driving other people off the track and going beyond what I think the spirit of the racing should be. The stewarding has been forced to take a very hard line and maybe they've had to go maybe too far the other way to make a point, but that's just the reality of the situation. I think the right decision has been made. Having been in the Stewards’ room in other championships myself, I can understand how difficult it is from their point of view to officiate correctly every single time. But on the whole the IMSA championship is officiated very well and I think we can all probably agree that Road America was too far out of hand and the right reaction has happened.”

PETIT LE MANS IS A UNIQUE RACE WHERE YOU START AT LUNCHTIME IN THE HEAT OF THE AFTERNOON, THEN SUNDOWN, AND TWO OR THREE HOURS AT NIGHT. DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE PHASE OF THE RACE WHEN YOU LOVE TO BE IN THE CAR OR WHERE YOU'RE HAPPIER TO BE ON THE PIT WALL?

“The night driving is awesome around Petit Le Mans. The start of the race and the first four or five hours when you know there's nothing to be gained by fighting, it's just easy to come a cropper and find yourself in a situation that you don't want to be in. So frankly you're driving slightly more on tenterhooks trying to keep the car clean at that point. So that's not super fun always but at the end of the day you're driving, in my instance, a beautiful Corvette Z06 GT3.R around a racetrack that's awesome so I can't complain.”

DOES BEING IN A GTP CHAMPIONSHIP BATTLE TWO YEARS AGO AT THIS TRACK HELP THIS YEAR WITH KNOWING THE TRAFFIC SITUATION AND SUCH?

“I don't know if it helps a huge amount just because they're two different cars and the races look very different if you're in a prototype versus a GT car in terms of what you're managing actively on track. In a prototype you're just looking at overtaking the whole time and how to minimize laptime loss whereas in GTs it's almost the opposite. The whole time you're looking in your mirrors a lot and trying to work out when to block people a bit and prioritize your speed through the corners versus letting people go through smoothly. That sometimes is a far better solution to just suck up a bit of time loss before the corner to then get out of it cleanly. So that's really the fundamental difference between the two classes.

“Having won the race in the past, having won a championship at Petit, I don't think I approach the race any differently to my first ever time. It's mayhem at times, having watched it before. I think the priority is to keep a clean car as in every IMSA race, but even more so in the longer races because it's the last race of the season; there's zero chance to come back from any mistakes in the following races. It's going to be super-important for our Pratt Miller guys to be on it with the strategy. Trying to preempt what other people do all the time and react to other people's situations is a huge challenge. I don't envy them having to sit on the pit wall and make those calls.”

COULD YOU TALK ABOUT THE CHANGING TRACK CONDITIONS AND HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO KEEP UP WITH THOSE FOR THE NIGHTTIME SESSION?

“The night at Petit Le Mans is incredibly important in terms of the race result. It's the most important and so it's sometimes the case that depending on the car balance that you have during the day and night that you learn during the testing you have to make a compromise and put up with a difficult car in the day so that it's there for you in the night. That sometimes is a pretty bold call to make… to have to endure maybe five or six hours of racing where you don't have the pace and to trust that it's going to come good in the end. Obviously sometimes you don't know whether that decision is going to be correct or not. Thankfully our Corvette works pretty well in all conditions, but it is something where you tweak the balance slightly from what you learn in night practice to make sure that you're fast at the end. It's a different animal racing at night at Petit compared to the first four or five hours of the race.”

HOW DO THE CHANGES FROM RACE CONTROL IMPACT THE SPUR-OF-THE-MOMENT DECISIONS THAT YOU ALL HAVE TO MAKE? HOW MUCH ARE YOU HAVING TO SECOND-GUESS WHEN YOU'RE MAKING A MOVE NOW? DOES IT PLAY ON YOUR MIND AT ALL?

“I think the real shift in, like I see IMSA’s policing of the policies of the regulations and stuff, driver conduct, all of that stuff, has taken a pretty big change, but I just maintained that I think they had to you know, make a clear shift to get all of our attention to make us sit up and actually listen to what is said in the briefings and expect what they're saying to be enforced. I think we will recognize that now and it then does transmit into your thoughts a little bit when you're in the car, but it's really tough to be actively, you know, thinking about those things, have them at the front of your mind whilst you're also, you know, running around, trying to find the last half tenth in corners here and there, fighting with cars door-to-door. Letting other cars through, faster cars and different classes. You know, there's so much going on that you can't really, you know, send it down the inside and now be placing your car in a massively different way, but I think there will be some people on the grid, probably who would have mid-corner if they're on the inside, just put their foot in in the trophy, the other car off the track and sort of thought, oh, we'll get away with it all that. As long as there's any big smash, then it should be fine. I would hope, and I think we've seen it, that those sorts of situations have reduced massively on the odd occasion that it does happen, then they get penalized and so they should learn their lesson pretty quickly. I just think it gives better, fairer racing. I appreciate that IMSA has historically been a championship that has great racing because people are fairly respectful and the rules don't need to be enforced too much, but I'm just hoping we can get back to that. The drivers can retain this level of respect, and you, do the right things on track so that the stewards don't have to throw penalties left, right and center, but those need to be a shift.”

I ASSUME YOU JUST WANT CONSISTENCY, RIGHT? WHAT YOU DID LAST WEEK, YOU’RE GOING TO CALL THE SAME THIS WEEK OR NOT.

“Absolutely. I think that, yeah, continuing things through Petit would definitely be sensible, now that the drivers are getting used to the new system, as it were, which isn't really that new. It's just that things are being forced correctly, in my opinion. I don't see a huge amount of new regulations being written. It's just we've had enough guys. You're taken to make now. But yeah, I think it's difficult from the championship's point of view, honestly, even in the offseason to say, we're going to relax things a bit now, they can't, right? Because then you give an inch and everyone will take a mile. So I think that's for them to just try and find the right balance of being consistent, but still, yeah, promoting that great IMSA product that we've grown used to seeing.” Source: Corvette Racing

Alexander Sims ahead of Petit Le Mans

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