Andy Pilgrim

Andrew Pilgrim (born 18 August 1956 in Nottingham) is a British-born racing driver, who became a United States citizen in 1998. He is a Cadillac factory driver at the SCCA World Challenge, where he resulted GT class champion in 2005, runner-up in 2007, 2008 and 2012, third in 2006 and 2013. He also resulted fourth in 2009 and 2010 with a K-Pax Volvo. Pilgrim was also a Corvette Racing factory driver from 1999 to 2003.

Racing career

He began racing an IMSA Renault Cup (a semi-pro entry level series) Renault Alliance in the 1980s.

His professional racing began in 1996 when he made his 24 Hours of Le Mans debut. He joined the Chevrolet Corvette factory team in 1999. In 2001 he was selected as teammate for Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Dale Earnhardt Sr. and Kelly Collins in the 24 Hours of Daytona and the team finished second in class. He also won the 2001 Petit Le Mans. After the 24 Hours of Daytona, Dale Earnhardt Sr. promised to someday put Pilgrim in a NASCAR stock-car, a promise he was unable to fulfill due to his death a few weeks later during the 2001 Daytona 500.

He left the Corvette program in 2004 but stayed with General Motors, driving for the winning team at the Daytona 24 in a Doran-Pontiac and spending the rest of the season driving for the new Cadillac CTS-V factory team in the SPEED World Challenge GT Series. The following year Pilgrim won the driver's championship in that series in his CTS-V. Staying with the team, he finished 3rd and 2nd in the series in 2006 and 2007.

In 2007 he also made his NASCAR Busch Series debut, driving two road course races for Earnhardt, Jr.'s JR Motorsports team. The purpose of the ride was to fulfill Dale Earnhardt's promise to Pilgrim. One of them was at Montreal in the inaugural NAPA 200 in which he almost won but had run out of gas on a restart losing the race, and barely avoided Marcos Ambrose who was crashing as a result of being tapped by Robby Gordon. Pilgrim's best finish in the Busch series is 15th in both races.

In 2008 he continued to drive the SPEED World Challenge CTS-V, although it is now a privateer team rather than a factory program, sponsored by Remington.

In 2009, Pilgrim joined Randy Pobst as part of the K-Pax team, campaigning the Volvo S60 in the SPEED World Challenge. He resulted fourth in the drivers standings in 2009 and 2010

For 2011 Pilgrim rejoined GM in World Challenge driving the factory Cadillac CTS-V Coupe alongside Johnny O'Connell. He was fifth in 2011, runner-up in 2012, third in 2013 and fourth in 2014.

Pilgrim made his Sprint Cup debut in 2011 at Infineon driving the 46 Car for Whitney Motorsports, where he finished 26th.

He currently resides in Boca Raton, Florida.

Motorsports career results

SCCA National Championship Runoffs

24 Hours of Le Mans results

Year	Team	Co-Drivers	Car	Class	Laps	Pos.	Class Pos.
1996	New Hardware Racing Parr Motorsport	Stéphane Ortelli Andrew Bagnall	Porsche 911 GT2	GT2	299	17th	4th
1997	Roock Racing	André Ahrlé Bruno Eichmann	Porsche 911 GT2	GT2	306	10th	2nd
2000	Corvette Racing	Franck Fréon Kelly Collins	Chevrolet Corvette C5-R	GTS	327	10th	3rd
2001	Corvette Racing	Franck Fréon Kelly Collins	Chevrolet Corvette C5-R	GTS	271	14th	2nd
2002	Corvette Racing	Franck Fréon Kelly Collins	Chevrolet Corvette C5-R	GTS	331	13th	2nd
2003	Corvette Racing	Oliver Gavin Kelly Collins	Chevrolet Corvette C5-R	GTS	326	11th	2nd

NASCAR

(key) (Bold – Pole position awarded by qualifying time. Italics – Pole position earned by points standings or practice time. * – Most laps led.)

Sprint Cup Series

Busch Series

External links

• Andy Pilgrim's Official Site
• Sprint Cup Debut
• Andy Pilgrim driver statistics at Racing-Reference