Pratt Miller Engineering made its name in racing as the group that has run the all-world Corvette Racing program alongside Chevrolet since it was founded to run the C5-R. Now, RACER's Marshall Pruett reports that the group is ready to consider another major motorsports initiative: an IndyCar team of its own, building on a decade of support work within the series.
The move is possible, in part, because GM has reduced its engineering demands for the Pratt Miller Motorsports division. On the open-wheel side, the group had been a major partner of the Chevrolet IndyCar program since it re-opened in 2012. A recent restructuring has shifted many of those support duties onto the brand's Charlotte Technical Center. That frees up internal bandwidth for the division to pursue a second major racing program. Although the team is looking for partners, Pratt Miller Motorsports VP Brandon Widmer tells RACER that PME would want to "be the majority shareholders and control [their] own destiny" in any final arrangement.
Pratt Miller's relationship with Corvette has also changed, although the changes look very familiar; the two companies announced late last month that Corvette Racing as we know it would be replaced by Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller, with Pratt Miller both racing factory-supported cars in the U.S. and building the new Z06.R racer worldwide. While that new alignment will keep PME racing Corvettes starting with the new car's debut in 2024, the proposed IndyCar program is targeting a debut in either 2025 or 2026.
