BRDC British F3 race winner Nico Varrone won the GTE-Am class at the Le Mans 24 Hours last weekend, despite falling more than two laps behind.
Sharing a Chevrolet Corvette C8.R with Nicky Catsburg and Ben Keating, the trio had put the car on class pole ahead of the race, with Catsburg starting the contest.
However after two and a half hours, the car required a right-front damper replacement, with the team spending two laps in the pits in the process.
After a recovery drive through the night, despite challenging weather conditions that left some parts of the circuit wet and other parts bone dry the team came back into victory contention in the early morning. With six hours remaining, 30 seconds covered the top-three cars in class, and a strong stint from Varrone put the car back into top spot with three hours on the clock.
The team ultimately finished two minutes ahead of the TF Sport Aston Martin Vantage GTE, driven by BRDC F4 podium finisher Charlie Eastwood.
Speaking to Daily Sports Car, Varrone said: “I have no words even though it’s only been an hour from the end. It’s just been incredible. Our race basically started two laps down early, but the team was so fast in managing to repair it.
“We went back out and had great pace and a great car. The Corvette Racing team, the engineers and strategy, my teammates Nicky – he’s a legend and did a lot of stints and was really quick – Ben – even though he’s a Bronze, he was flying – all of GM and Chevrolet, my family and everyone, there are a lot of people involved in this. It’s a dream come true.”
Before venturing into sports car racing, Varrone had proven himself to be a rapid contender in single-seaters, taking a British F3 race win with Hillspeed at Spa-Francorchamps in 2019, and taking a podium at Silverstone.
The Argentine also competed for Chris Dittmann Racing in the first half of the 2020 season, and was the British F3 iRacing champion with the team before that.