Chevrolet clinches championship with Richard Westbrook's Petit Le Mans start

BRASELTON, Ga. — With the wave of the green flag Saturday morning at the start of Petit Le Mans, Chevrolet clinched its fourth consecutive engine manufacturer’s championship in a top division of North American sports car racing.

Richard Westbrook led the No. 90 VisitFlorida.com Racing Corvette DP to the green flag, clinching the championship for Chevrolet in the Prototype class.

The race was interrupted by a full-course caution 3 minutes after the start when Ben Keating’s Dodge Viper GT3-R slid off course and bounced off a barrier. Keating recovered and got the car, its rear wing dangling, back to the pits for repairs.

Before the initial caution, Westbrook had pulled ahead of Christian Fittipaldi’s Action Express Racing Corvette DP by more than 1 second.

Westbrook pulled away even farther before a second caution an hour into the race bunched the field again. This time, a tire puncture sent Earl Bamber’s Porsche 911 RSR off track. Bamber also returned to the race after a pit stop.

Chevrolet won seven consecutive races this season en route to fourth championship since the Corvette DP was introduced in 2012. The first two championships were part of the Rolex Grand-Am Series, while the second two (2014 and 2015) were part of the Tudor United SportsCar Championship after the merger of Grand-Am and the American Le Mans Series following the 2013 season.

“The 2015 season was a great success for the Corvette Daytona Prototype program,” Jim Campbell, Chevrolet’s U.S. Vice President, Performance Vehicles and Motorsports, said in a statement. “It is a credit to our four Corvette DP teams, our Chevrolet engineers, and our technical partners at ECR Engines and Pratt & Miller."