Corvette Racing’s skull mascot will on the spotlight at the Monterey Sports Car Championships at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca on this coming Saturday, Oct. 20, 2007! The team and fans call him Jake and he will soon beautify the Compuware Corvette C6.R race cars in full-body graphics for the four-hour season finale of the 12-race American Le Mans Series this weekend.

"We wanted to do something special for Laguna Seca, and the guys on the team are totally behind Jake. He’s a little edgy, urban, and underground. Young fans get it. The special Jake cars are a one-time only deal, just for fun, to make the last race of season memorable for the fans," says Corvette Racing program manager Doug Fehan.

Jake, the skull mascot, is the creation of designer Eddie Jabbour of Kick Design.

"Jake is the unofficial official mascot of Corvette Racing," Jabbour said with a laugh. "He really came from the team. I was at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2004 and noticed that the team had adopted skull icons as a symbol of the ‘take-no-prisoners’ mentality of those intense 24 hours. In fact, someone had scrawled ‘TAKE NO PRISONERS’ on the wall of the Corvette garage."

"I thought it would be awesome if there was an icon that truly belonged to Corvette Racing. I scribbled the Corvette flag on a cocktail napkin, then drew a skull around it. I thought the design worked, and the team embraced it immediately."

"Jake first appeared on the cars at Le Mans in 2005," Jabbour recalled. "Soon he was on the team uniforms, their travel shirts, and on the drivers’ helmets. It was in sync with what they were about, and the fans recognized that. Now people are flipping out that there are going to be two Jake cars at the last race."

"We’re not taking this race lightly. The drivers and crew for the No. 3 Corvette C6.R have something to prove after getting knocked out early in Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta, and they’re going to be pushing hard to end the season on a high note. Oliver Gavin, Olivier Beretta and the No. 4 Corvette crew have wrapped up the drivers championship, but they have pride at stake and they’re certainly not going to coast," says GM Road Racing Group manager Steve Wesoloski.

"We’ll push to be faster than we were a year ago," he continued. "That’s been our goal at every race this season, and I think we’ll see strong competition between the two Corvettes."