After a fairytale season that saw the No. 63 KÜHL Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R of Alec Udell and Tommy Milner take the first eight races of their season, a ninth — and the championship that would’ve come with it —proved to be a step too far. The duo, joined this weekend by Corvette factory ace Alexander Sims, finished the Indianapolis 8 Hour powered by AWS on the third step of the Pro class podium, securing a runner-up position in this year’s Fanatec GT World Challenge America powered by AWS. In the No. 64 KÜHL sister car, Bryan Sellers, Blake McDonald, and Patrick Liddy overcame some early adversity to finish sixth in Pro-Am.
After a record-setting eighth consecutive win for the No. 63 last time out at Barber, the championship that had originally looked impossible back at the car’s debut in COTA suddenly seemed attainable with a good result at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Saturday. However, it became fairly obvious early in the race weekend that the Corvette was at a considerable pace disadvantage to the other manufacturers.
After qualifying P15 (No. 63) and P22 (No. 64), it looked like the team had found some pace in the early running of the race. Udell methodically moved through the field in the first hour, eventually making a pass for the class lead on championship rival Wright Motorsports No. 120 Porsche. Sims and Milner built on that lead in the first few hours, but eventually the pace deficit became too much to fight off. In the latter’s first stint, the No. 120 erased a 26-second lead in less than hour, despite Milner running his fastest laps of the weekend.
The big flashpoint of the race came just before halfway. During a round of pit stops, the No. 120 left their pit box and made contact with the right-front of the No. 63, which knocked the dive planes on that side off the car. While Milner was able to restart the race in the lead of the class, the reduced downforce made him vulnerable to the Wright car behind, which somehow escaped an unsafe release penalty and made the pass a few laps later.
Even with the gap to the other cars and the damage sustained during the race, the team continued to push for any opportunity to get back to the front. Various alternate strategies from the pit wall put the car in the lead of the race multiple times in the back half of the race, but yellow flags never quite fell at the right time to allow those gambles to pay off, and Sims brought the car across the yard of bricks as the checkers flew in fifth place overall and third in class.
On the other side of the garage, McDonald, like Udell, made his way forward in the No. 64 during a grueling double stint to start the race. He ceded control to Liddy just before two hours gone, who continued marching forward before getting hit in the left front, which broke the left front toe link and forced the car back to the garage. The crew, in a show of their preparedness and professionalism, quickly got the suspension repaired and the car was back on track less than 15 minutes after going behind the wall. Liddy and Sellers traded the car back and forth in the back half of the race, slowly climbing the scoring tower before the latter brought it across the line sixth in the Pro-Am class.
“For me, it was a great weekend because the team performed flawlessly,” said Team Owner David Askew. “We put two cars on the race track this afternoon and two took the checkered flag, which is the main thing you need to worry about in endurance racing. On top of that, we were able to stand on the podium this weekend, which, when you consider the pace disadvantage we had to the other manufacturers all week, is a pretty remarkable feat. So, I am very happy with how the car performed, and I’m especially happy with how the team performed. Flawless pit stops, flawless execution, and even when things went wrong, the team was able to get things fixed and back on track. It was really a treat for me to see how seamlessly everything worked and how well everybody worked together.”
This marks the end of a groundbreaking season for the team in GT World Challenge America competition. Between the two cars, the team won ten races in class, including seven overall. Both cars made it to victory lane, including sweeps of the top step of the podium at Road America and Barber Motorsports Park. Despite the No. 63 missing the first four races of the season, they finished just 27 points behind the champions.
“Coming into the season, I had no expectations,” said Askew. “I don't think the team really had any expectations about how we would do either, other than that we were going to give it our best shot and use this season really to figure the car and team out. So, if you consider that we started with a car in the second round of the season and another car in the third round, the team has performed remarkably to find the success they have this year.
“We all know that in racing your biggest asset is your people, and we’ve been focusing on getting the right people in and enabling them to do what they do best. There are a lot of different areas of expertise required to put competitive race cars on the track every week and everything has to work seamlessly. It’s like launching a rocket – everyone works incredibly hard and then you get to see if the thing flies. For us to see that both cars have not just gotten off the ground, but absolutely took off like they have in their first season is incredibly promising for this team. We have people here that have too many wins to count, and then we also have some that were able to get the first wins in their career this season. To see the work that everyone has put in and to see that be channeled into one big goal – winning – makes me super proud of this entire organization.”
From The Drivers
No. 63 KÜHL Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R
Tommy Milner
“We can’t let one weekend cloud the season we’ve had with DXDT Racing and Corvette. It’s a great team, a real pleasure to drive with Alec and work with everyone at DXDT Racing with some help from Corvette Racing. Today stings a little bit, but that will go away quickly when we look back on the year and all we achieve. I’m very, very proud of how good this team is, how good this car was and how impressed I was with Alec all year long. It was excellent on all sides. Today was a great example of that. We kept putting ourselves at the front of the field with great strategy, not making mistakes, doing all the right things and giving ourselves the best chance possible. It just wasn’t going to happen for us today, unfortunately. We did everything we could to give ourselves a great opportunity.”
Alec Udell
“From the start in May, it wasn’t supposed to be possible for us to contend for the championship. That speaks to the platform of the Corvette Z06 GT3.R, DXDT Racing, Corvette Racing and everyone coming together to put such a competitive program together. I think that turned some heads and put us on the map. I’m happy with everyone’s performance today. I think we extracted the maximum that we could have from the racecar. I’ve learned a ton from Tommy and got to learn a lot this weekend from Alex as well. I’m really happy with everyone on the team – Bryan (Sellers), Erin (Gahagan, team manager) and David (Askew, team owner). It’s been a great program with so many people that are behind the scenes. I don’t think it has set in right now because there is still the frustration of the day. But everything that was in our control we maximized this year.”
Alexander Sims
“We knew we didn’t have the ability to race at the front on pace. It was difficult in the sense that we were up front at times, and that gives you hope. You start to wonder whether the situation might resolve itself and you might be able to hang on. But we couldn’t unfortunately. That’s the reality today. The Porsche guys did a good job and were really fast; well done to them. Huge credit to the DXDT team. For their first season in this new Corvette and the amount of wins they had and the only race they didn’t win was still a third place, that’s an amazing season. I’m proud to be a small part of that.”
No. 63 KÜHL Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R
Bryan Sellers
“I think when you look at it from a team perspective, it was actually a really good day. um this was a day that everybody had to execute very well, from the team side to the driver side, and I think you saw that on both the No. 63 and No. 64 car. We had a little bit of misfortune on the No. 64 car with some contact with the Porsche. I think there’s probably nothing we could have changed or controlled there, but everything outside of that that we could control and could change. I think we executed perfectly and if you would have told us starting the day that we would have had a chance for both cars to finish on the podium, I think we probably wouldn't have believed that that was true. When the teamwork comes together and everyone executes, this is what it looks like. Super happy for the whole program and happy for the No. 63 guys to finish second in the championship with the pretty incredible season they had.”
Blake McDonald
“It was great to race this weekend with DXDT. It was fun to mix it up at the beginning of the race with that double stint and find my rhythm early on. Unfortunately we had that contact midway through the race, but the team did a great job to get the car back out there, and Patrick and Bryan did a really solid job taking it to the end. It’s a bummer that we had that incident, because I think without it, we could’ve fought for a podium at the end of the day, but that’s racing.”
Patrick Liddy
“The Indy 8H was full of what ifs for us. It was unfortunate that as a team we weren’t given the opportunity to compete on a level playing field with the rest of the cars, and then had to spend 14 minutes in the garage after getting hit. Even with our struggles, the team and drivers never gave up and clawed us back to P6. I’m very grateful to Blake and DXDT for the opportunity to run with them and hoping to work with them again soon!”