The Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona is here, and for the GTP manufacturers, the build-up to the event feels completely different to last year.
In 2023, everything was late. Testing time was short, spare parts were scarce and the form book was a blank sheet of paper. It was as chaotic as it was exciting. On reflection, the reliability shown by the four new cars at Daytona really was remarkable.
A year on, the factory teams in play head back to Florida with 12 months of testing, practice, qualifying and race data under their belts. Cadillac, with its two-car V-Series.R effort, is one of them.
Look around at its 2024 IMSA and FIA WEC entries and outside of some driver shuffling very little has changed. The car will race in an identical spec to 2023 when the green flag drops in Florida later this month and there is “no update” on the prospect of customer cars being made available any time soon.
In the USA, Ganassi and Action Express will run a car apiece on behalf of Cadillac, and for Daytona, they will not be joined by the FIA WEC full-season car like last year. Instead, Ganassi’s WEC crew are fully focused on the FIA WEC 2024 Prologue and season opener in Qatar in late February, early March.
And in the WEC Cadillac remains a single-car team for 2024. Attempts behind the scenes to sign off a second car for the world championship were not successful. Instead, Alex Lynn and Earl Bamber will return as a duo and likely only run with a third driver at select races during the season. The pair will, however, still appear at Rolex, just not in GTP. Both drivers will represent GM in brand new Corvette Z06 GT3.Rs.
Heading into the new season, GM Sports Car Racing manager Laura Wontrop Klauser says she feels optimistic that Cadillac can take further strides forward on both sides of the Atlantic this year.
“2023 was great,” she told DSC when asked to evaluate the WEC programme’s debut year. “Everything behind the scenes showed us how we could get better. It was phenomenal to get a podium at Le Mans too.
“And if you look at each race, we weren’t winning but that’s ok, we were figuring things out. We will emerge smarter and stronger.
“We’re not trying to turn our heads and say this will be easy. It’s tougher for us than the teams with two cars, but the mission is being accomplished and we are using the IMSA programme to learn.
“We are sharing everything back and forth, trying to get more miles on the car and get the crew acclimated. ”
This year the likes of Peugeot and Porsche are set to bring significant revisions to their existing chassis to take steps forward for the coming season, while at Cadillac, no major changes are coming to the V-Series.R, at least not this year.
Instead, with a sweep of IMSA GTP titles (Two Manufacturers’ crowns, plus regular season Drivers’ and Teams’ and Endurance Cup Drivers’ and Teams’ titles), a major Sebring 12 Hours win and a podium at Le Mans earned in Year 1, refining the current package for Year 2 is the decision made.
“I think we need to make sure we fully understand the package we have,” Wontrop Klauser explained.
“At this point, it’s too late in the game to bring massive changes, so you won’t see any big changes in Daytona. But we are working on everything we haven’t had time to do, tick off items on the list.
“We do have the carryover team structure, we don’t need to worry about that. The only changes will be minor stuff within the rules.”
Does this mean that Cadillac is satisfied with the V-Series.R and confident it can achieve further success in the maturing GTP and Hypercar categories?
“We are never entirely satisfied,” she responded. “But we feel confident in what we have, we will continue to race and find success.
“Does that mean we are not looking at things beyond 2024? No, we are looking at things we want to do, we just want to make sure that if we make a change to the vehicle, it’s thought out well, we go through the approval process and don’t rush it.
“We rushed some things to get to the grid in 2023, we had to make last-minute decisions and sacrifices to do that,” she continued. “Thankfully we’ve landed with a package that’s been strong at 24-hour races.
“So at the end of the day, we want to make sure that if we’re making a change, we’re not shoving anything in just to make a change.
“Will we have a different discussion in 2025 about changes? Probably.”
Behind the scenes, Cadillac has plans for motorsport beyond sportscar racing. GM is now registered with the FIA as a Formula 1 power unit manufacturer from 2028, as part of the prospective Andretti Cadillac programme which it hopes to supply engines for. But as of right now, its plans are in limbo and there is no confirmation yet that Andretti will be accepted by FOM to become the 11th team.
Is this bid having an impact on the short-term plans for Cadillac’s sportscar programmes though? It depends on who you speak with… Ask Wontrop Klauser, as DSC did, about the push for a second FIA WEC entry and the prospect of more resources for its Stuttgart-based effort, and she will tell you:
“We’re always trying to figure out how we can grow the programme, but it’s a balance within the company.
“Where is the best use of resources? And resources, it isn’t just money, resources are your humans, it’s your testing facilities, it’s all of those things.
“So when we looked at what we are going to be able to do for 2024, we felt that keeping a carryover programme on the team side allowed us to hold one thing constant, which then means that we can focus on that other stuff, whether it’s for ’24 or ’25, and not have to also deal with bringing on a new team, new people.
“We did a lot of new things in 2023 and we were extremely successful. And we’re very proud of that.
“But we also, I think, pushed people to the absolute limit. What we did in 2023 is not sustainable. I am very, very lucky that no one has quit. Very lucky. And thankfully, I think the success has motivated people to keep on going. But we need to look at it.
“In 2024, we’re going to be building up maybe some of the people that are supporting in the background too. So I’m not asking people to work constantly with no breaks, no vacation, nothing for a whole year. That was crazy.
“At this point, we don’t know (about the Formula 1 bid). We’re still waiting. I’m excited though, we’re growing motorsport at General Motors, and it’s an exciting moment.”
