While the first color one might associate with Corvettes might be the red of the Little Red Corvette or even the American racing blue with the white stripe, Corvette has established a tradition of yellow for their Le Mans conquering race models, including the new C8.R. The yellow Corvettes have been competing in international sports car and endurance racing since the C5.

Jake Skull And The Yellow Corvette

When Chevrolet first took the Corvette racing in 2000 the racing world looked a little different. There were two sports car series in the United States, the American Le Mans Series and the Daytona series run by the USRRC. Both series were at the time being dominated by the Dodge Viper run by Team Oreca. The Velocity Yellow Corvettes and their mascot Jake Skull soon became a dominant challenger.

New Car, New Look

The number three yellow Corvette will be accompanied by the grey number four Corvette at its race debut shortly, competing at the 24 Hours of Daytona. The cars will be contesting with a different V8 engine than the launch model. The racing version has a 5.5 liter V8 with dual overhead cams and a flat-plane crank. It's expected that this engine will eventually make its way into a production model.

Strong Qualifier

The #4 grey Corvette has made a decent showing at its debut during the Roar Before the 24 at Daytona. The grey Corvette had a qualifying time, this one for pit position and garage allocation, of 1m42.793s. That's just .103 seconds off the class-leading Ferrari. Team driver Tommy Milner is encouraged by the all-new Corvette's performance so far. The 24 Hours of Daytona starts on January 25th and runs to the next day.

Sources: Motor Authority, Motorsport