When Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing came to the 24 Hours of Le Mans for the first time last year, the talk leading into the race mostly centred around how awesome it was just to see of IMSA’s most successful teams finally getting the chance to compete in sports car racing’s biggest stage, outside of their home country.
But as the week went on, that feeling soon subsided to disappointment for the #101 Cadillac V-Series.R: Never really a factor for a strong result in a race which ultimately ended well short of the goal due to an engine issue. In IMSA, the two-car Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing team finished 2025 without winning a race, definitely not what WTR expected when it switched manufacturers from Acura/Honda back to Cadillac/GM.
So, understandably, the tone around Cadillac WTR’s Le Mans return is a bit different. And with no other cars from IMSA’s GTP class invited to this year’s race, what can Ricky and Jordan Taylor, together with Filipe Albuquerque, do this year to avoid being lost in the shuffle of a loaded Hypercar field?
At least if Jordan Taylor is to be believed, Cadillac WTR is confident that this year will look more like the long-time IMSA/Grand-Am dynasty that fans in America have been used to seeing.
For one, the team will have had more time to prepare for the race, and data to draw from. “I think last year, everything came together so late,” admitted Taylor. “I think we got the entry a month or two in advance, and then everyone was kind of flat-out, trying to build a car and organise pit equipment, tool boxes, to go over.
“It was so last-minute, it was kind of a miracle that it all did come together as well as it did. So it’s nice to just have a year of studying stuff from last year, an extra year of preparation.
“All the drivers feel way more confident, I know the engineers feel way more confident…we had a lot more time to kind of massage this car to get it to where we want it to be – so I think everyone’s pretty excited.”
Though the results haven’t always showed it, year two of the Cadillac/Wayne Taylor Racing reunion has yielded stronger pace than 2025 as the team makes gains with the V-Series.R and its new Evo package.
This includes a third-place run in Detroit for Ricky Taylor and Albuquerque, their first official podium of 2026 after they were stripped of third in Sebring for a technical infringement.
But it doesn’t change that WTR has not won a race in IMSA since switching brands. In contrast, the union of Cadillac and Hertz Team JOTA, which also began in 2025, produced the American manufacturer’s first WEC Hypercar win at Saõ Paulo – just four races in. Meanwhile on the IMSA front, Action Express Racing (aka Cadillac Whelen or Cadillac AXR) has taken the GTP championship lead.
Some wondered whether WTR’s Le Mans preparation has become a distraction, taking precious energy and time away from the primary objective of turning the tide in IMSA. But that’s an assertion that Albuquerque dismissed entirely a few weeks ago.
In fact, he believes that the additional track time from Test Day to the race itself is actually what WTR really needs to finally get back to its winning ways in the long run.
“It’s not a distraction, I don’t think,” Albuquerque said before Detroit. “It’s just one more race onto the calendar. To be honest, nine races is not enough.
“In my opinion, it’s a bit short – so ten, it’s better, I think. Especially this year, 2026, I think doing Le Mans makes us better. There’s a test day, we have time to do stuff on the car, and learning about the tyres there in Le Mans, we will drive with both compounds as well.
“You gather more information about this, and especially for Wayne Taylor Racing, we need more races with the cars. I think we should not undervalue a team switching to a new manufacturer, when all the other teams are with the same manufacturer from year one.
“For us, it’s learning to deal with Cadillac people, learning about the car, the drivers adapting to the systems. I think more races is better, and I think this year, we are more prepared and everything is just flowing more.
“There’s all these things, and playing as well with JOTA together on the same weekend, it’s important. It’s a learning process. So I take it as a positive.”
And in the view of Cadillac Racing Programme Manager Keely Bosn, having an additional car in the race can only be a benefit in terms of adding one extra reference point, or even just slightly better odds of the manufacturer winning the race.
“I think this year, showing up with the Wayne Taylor team, just having any third car in Le Mans is a benefit. And so I think having their team there, having that continuous learning from last season and last Le Mans, they’re showing up even stronger this year,” Bosn said.
If the pundits’ form books all suggest that Cadillac WTR sits among the longest of long shots for victory, it doesn’t bother Jordan Taylor to head into the week flying under the radar. “I’d say we’re more of an underdog, so I think probably there’s a little bit less pressure,” Taylor says.
“We come here with Cadillac with the aim to win, whether we’re a full-season entrant or not, that’s going to be the goal – and that’s Cadillac’s expectation, is for us to be fighting for a podium. So we’re excited for it, obviously.
“Yeah, it’s a different series, a lot of different cars that we’re not used to racing against, different rule books, so it’s a lot for us to come here and get up to speed with. But everyone’s been doing their homework. Hopefully we can hit the ground running on and have a good race week.”
Not long after that declaration, the WTR Cadillac took a piece of glory during Test Day on Sunday, when Filipe Albuquerque set the fastest time in the first test session. And by the end of the second session that same evening, Albuquerque’s time held up enough to make the #101 Cadillac the fifth-fastest car of the entire day.
Bosn’s spirits as the head of Cadillac Racing as a whole are high, with WTR fifth and the #12 JOTA Cadillac third on the Test Day leaderboard. “We very much are going into Le Mans ready to win the race,” she remarked. “I think we have the best shot that we’ve had in a long time to be able to win it.
“We’re seeing the pace. We’re seeing the drivers are coming well-prepared. All of our people this year are very well-versed in what needs to happen to win that race. And we’ve made a lot of performance gains too, that we’re planning to take into Le Mans to really set us up for success.”
Images © Dailysportscar.com/Jack Webster/Andrew Lofthouse
