Cadillac Racing’s Earl Bamber is eager to put his 2024 struggles behind him – as it’s safe to say last year was not up to the high standards that the two-time 24 Hours of Le Mans winner and 2017 FIA World Endurance Champion has set since his 2015 breakout.
Last year was punctuated by two big blemishes for the Kiwi driver. His massive accident at the WEC 6 Hours of Spa Francorchamps was the more spectacular of the two, by far. Bamber attempted to thread the needle between the Porsche 963 of Neel Jani and the BMW M4 GT3 of Sean Gelael, but he’d broadside Gelael and crash hard into the barriers down the Kemmel Straight.
Just a little over a month prior he was at the 12 Hours of Sebring, driving for Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports when he and Parker Thompson got tangled up and sent Thompson’s Lexus RC F GT3 spinning at turn three. It didn’t look so awful – before applying the context: Thompson was in a close battle for the GTD class lead, while Bamber was down several laps in GTD PRO due to issues outside his control.
He didn’t reach the podium in WEC last season – Ganassi’s final season with Cadillac – or in three IMSA starts.
“You know, sometimes you have years where no matter what you do, you can’t do anything wrong…and you have those years where no matter what you do, nothing rolls your way,” Bamber said in reflection of his 2024 struggles.
“For us in WEC, that was sort of one of those years. And then I think over here (in IMSA) as well, speaking to the guys, I think they sort of had one of those years too.
“But in the team at the moment, no one’s actually talking about last year,” he asserts. “We know the areas that we can improve. We know what not to do.
“I think when you have those sort of years and those races – if you focus on the right details, you come out stronger as a driver and as a team. And I think that’s sort of the combination that we’ve got at the moment.”
General Motors didn’t lose faith in Bamber’s ability – in fact, they’ve put a lot of trust in him to help spearhead a renewed Cadillac Racing effort on both the IMSA and WEC fronts. This year he’ll be running full-time in both series: In IMSA with Cadillac Whelen (Action Express Racing), taking the place of Genesis-bound Pipo Derani, and in WEC with the new-look Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA, which replaces Chip Ganassi Racing.
Bamber is far from the only factory driver who will be piling up frequent flyer points by the bucketload in top-tier prototype racing this year, and truth be told, he’s been used to it from his days when his focus was primarily in GT racing. The added seat time is always a bonus – and he’ll only have to miss one IMSA race, at Laguna Seca, due to a clash with his priority programme in WEC.
Luckily, Cadillac Racing has invested in a strong reinforcement in Frederik Vesti to fill in for him – and of course, Jack Aitken has taken on a bigger role as the most tenured driver in the red #31 Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R.
“Fred is an amazing talent – great driver out of Formula 2, Formula 1 reserve driver…and I think he’s already showing that he can be just as good as anyone,” Bamber says of Vesti.
That’s a strong vote of confidence for a driver who could use it, though, in fairness to Vesti, his big crash at this year’s Daytona 24 Hours wasn’t his fault but that of a suspension failure at the fastest corner of the Road Course.
He also knows Aitken’s quality through his tenure at Cadillac Whelen thus far – which has had its share of misfortunes, but also undeniable speed. “Jack, I mean, it’s pretty easy to say how quick he is, with all his poles last year.
“I think we’ve got a really potent driver line-up. It’s really good fun between all the drivers. It’s a really good vibe between all of us.”
Cadillac has worked to emphasise a more harmonious relationship between its two IMSA teams, Action Express and Wayne Taylor Racing – with the idea that instead of racing as two separate teams (as Action Express and Chip Ganassi Racing seemed to move), they would act as one big three-car team.
“There’s a different approach this year, to work as one team – and we’re definitely already finding the benefits of that. At the end of the day, the most important thing is that Cadillac wins the race. It doesn’t matter if it’s the #10, the #40, or the #31. Selfishly, I would say I hope it’s always the #31 – but what’s most important for the overall programme is that we get Cadillac to the front. And I think there’s a really good working relationship between everyone,” he says.
“There’s a really great harmony between all the drivers as well. From that side, I think there’s real positivity in the teams, and also at Cadillac Racing at the moment.”
Of course, this year hasn’t started off the way Bamber or Cadillac had hoped. Two of the three IMSA V-Series.Rs, including the #31 Whelen machine, had heavy crashes and the other – the #10 WTR Cadillac – didn’t have the firepower to contend for the win. The WEC season began with promise, but that promise was snuffed out when the two JOTA Caddys crashed as they were about to lead the field to the green flag.
With that in mind, could Cadillac still turn the tide and reverse their fortunes? “I think so,” Bamber said confidently. “I know people talked a lot about last year, but at the end of the day, Cadillac was the inaugural GTP Champions in IMSA. We were on the podium at Le Mans, we’ve led laps and big sequences of the race at Le Mans, which is obviously the big one.
“They came very, very close at Daytona and arguably, with a few things going the right way, they’d be in the hunt for the (IMSA) championship last year with both cars.”
“I don’t think it’s all doom and gloom. It’s always easy to get negative, but we’ve also got a lot of positives. The programme is still building. We’ve got a lot of talented people that are really pushing the envelope, but obviously, everyone else is not standing still either.
“So, with everyone pushing forward, harder and harder, we’ve just gotta keep raising our game – and like I said, sometimes when you have those hard years, you come out punching much harder. And you know your weaknesses, and how to rectify those. I think on both sides, we know how to go about these races and what we need to do.”
Bamber’s chance at WEC redemption will have to wait until April at Imola, but this weekend, he can get his second Sebring 12 Hours win, and Cadillac’s sixth as a manufacturer in nine years.
And that’ll go a long way to leaving the bitter memories of 2024 in the rear-view.
Images © Cadillac, Andrew ‘Skippy’ Hall and Jack Webster / Dailysportscar.com
