Buoyed by a hard-earned second-place finish in last month’s Rolex 6 Hours of São Paulo – the #81 Corvette’s best result of the 2025 FIA World Endurance Championship to-date – Charlie Eastwood has set his sights on regular race wins and podiums over the final three rounds of the campaign.
Predicted to be amongst the pre-season favourites in FIA WEC’s fiercely-disputed LMGT3 category, Eastwood and TF Sport team-mates Rui Andrade and Tom Van Rompuy arrived in Brazil with just one rostrum appearance to their credit from the opening four events, but aiming to build upon their burgeoning momentum after taking the chequered flag third in June’s 24 Hours of Le Mans.
The fifth-quickest time in both of Friday’s free practice sessions marked a solid start, and after Van Rompuy advanced safely through the first part of qualifying, Andrade put the Corvette tenth on the grid in the Hyperpole shootout, alongside the sister TF Sport entry piloted by Jonny Edgar in ninth.
In the race, the #81 crew stealthily climbed the order to haul themselves increasingly into contention, with Eastwood making the most of a smart strategy to infiltrate a four-way fight for second in the closing stages as he overhauled the #78 Lexus, Iron Dames Porsche and pole-sitting Aston Martin to successfully scoop the runner-up spoils.
The result represented TF Sport’s third trip to the rostrum in FIA WEC in 2025 and elevated Eastwood, Andrade and Van Rompuy from sixth to fifth in the LMGT3 Drivers’ classification, 33 points shy of the summit of the standings.
“As we’ve seen many times this year, TF Sport executed a really solid race – a great strategy, no mistakes and no penalties, and we were able to capitalise upon that to get a great P2,” commented the Irishman, who drove the final two-and-a-half hours at Interlagos and who only a week earlier had triumphed alongside Andrade in the European Le Mans Series at Imola.
“I definitely feel like some momentum is behind me now. I had a tough 18-month start to this journey, but with three podiums in a row with TF between Le Mans, Imola in ELMS and here, I’ve no doubt we can continue to get podiums and race wins at every event to close out the year and hopefully go into (the season finale in) Bahrain with a chance of winning the championship.”
“Great teamwork by the entire team to move us up the field after a difficult qualifying,” added Andrade, “and then a great final stint by Charlie to make the overtake which put us P2 at the flag. I’m super-happy with this positive momentum and looking forward now to some rest during the summer break after some intense weeks of racing.”
Despite a more troubled run for the #33 Corvette Z06 LMGT3.R – with contact in traffic and a Full Course Yellow infraction obliging a strategic re-think and incurring penalties that dropped the car down the order – Edgar, Daniel Juncadella and Ben Keating battled back to wind up seventh in-class. That cemented a double points finish for TF Sport for the second consecutive race and third time this year, while consolidating third place in the title table for the Qatar-winning trio.
“It was a disappointing day, with the penalties costing us around 55 seconds,” rued Juncadella. “So yeah, it’s a big deal, but I enjoyed the alternate strategy. I think it paid off very nicely in terms of track position to switch to myself after Ben’s first stint and again after his second stint. That was very cool and I got to overtake a couple of cars, which was nice.
“And then at the end, I think Jonny did a great job. He was defending against the McLaren, which was clearly faster and he did really well. He also overtook the BMW so it was just perfect execution from him. Ben didn’t have the best of days, but we live and learn and will hopefully get better for the next one.”
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