Chevrolet didn’t win the 2026 IMSA GTD PRO Manufacturer Championship by dominating race weekends. It won by refusing to throw them away. The checkered flag at Saturday’s Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta confirmed Chevrolet’s 16th GT-class Manufacturer title since Corvette Racing launched in 1999, and its second consecutive GTD PRO crown.
The numbers tell the story cleanly. Across the full 2026 season, the No. 3 and No. 4 Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports Corvette Z06 GT3.Rs each finished outside the top 10 exactly once. The No. 3, driven by Antonio Garcia, Alexander Sims, and Marvin Kirchhöfer, took an outright win at the Detroit Grand Prix. The No. 4, with Tommy Milner, Nicky Catsburg, and Nico Varrone, reached the podium four times without winning a single race. Program Manager Andrea Hidalgo put it directly: “With the way IMSA scores points for qualifying and the race, you can win the championship without ever winning a race. So, that persistence, aiming for strong execution even when you’re down, pays off.”
A sixth-place finish from Team DragonSpeed’s one-off No. 74 GTD PRO entry at Petit Le Mans provided the margin Chevrolet needed to lock the title. It was the kind of contribution that only registers in a points table, which is exactly the point.
The No. 4 crew collected two additional awards at season’s end: the BDO Knows Strategy Award for race-day execution and the Michelin All Hands for the Win Award for the fewest pit-lane minutes across the season. Both reflect a team that treated time and position as the same resource.
Beyond the two factory entries, Corvette customer team 13 Autosport won the Bob Akin Award for the third year running. Driver Orey Fidani finished as the highest-scoring bronze-rated driver in the GTD class, and that result carries a tangible consequence: an invitation to compete in the 24 Hours of Le Mans next year.
The championship was built as much between races as during them. Corvette Racing developed new powertrain settings through track testing across the season, but the team leaned heavily on a driver-in-loop simulator to compress the learning cycle. After each round, drivers and engineers ran sessions replicating the race just completed, using the feedback to sharpen simulation models before the next event. Hidalgo described the approach as continuous correlation between what the simulator predicted and what the car actually did on track, an investment that has to pay forward before it pays backward.
That work isn’t pausing for the off-season. Corvette Racing is finalizing an “Evo” upgrade package for the Z06 GT3.R aimed at aerodynamic performance, reliability, and serviceability. The package will be ready for the 2027 IMSA season, which opens with the Rolex 24 at Daytona in January.
Chevrolet has now won six GTD PRO and GT Le Mans Manufacturer titles in IMSA since 2014, more than any other manufacturer in that span. It is also the fourth Manufacturer Championship earned with the eighth-generation mid-engine Corvette. At the same Petit Le Mans weekend, Cadillac swept the GTP Manufacturer, Team, and Driver titles, giving General Motors a clean sweep of IMSA’s top two class championships in a single afternoon at Road Atlanta.
Sixteen titles in 27 years is a program that has learned how to keep score. An Evo package and a winter in the simulator suggest Corvette Racing is not planning to find out what 17 feels like by accident.
Source: Chevrolet. Images courtesy of Chevrolet.
