The 2023 season of the FIA World Endurance Championship is almost upon us and at Cadillac Racing there is a great desire to begin the adventure in the World Championship as well.
After the debut of the brand new V-LMDh at Daytona, Chip Ganassi Racing is preparing to line up its #2 at the start of the Hypercar category in the top endurance series with Earl Bamber, Alex Lynn and Richard Westbrook to face off against Toyota, Ferrari, Glickenhaus , Peugeot, Porsche and Vanwall-By Kolles.
The challenge will be tough, but it’s also the biggest motivation for the American team, as Bamber explained in a roundtable discussion attended by Motorsport.com.
Earl Bamber prova la Cadillac LMDh GTP
Photo by: Cadillac Communications
“I think the most important and exciting thing is to be able to fight again for a World Championship against the best teams, drivers and manufacturers, with the aim of course to win Le Mans, which is very important for all of us at Cadillac Racing. We are a team of an American brand and there is the desire to establish itself on an absolute level after so many years”, underlines the New Zealander, who then tries to provide his picture of the situation.
“I think Toyota, in general, is in the best shape of all, they are the point of reference. Even without tire warmers, which is a novelty that all the teams will have to deal with, I think they are the favorites because they have already raced at Sebring l last year by going on the podium. But in any case it will be an interesting first race, with a balance between LMDh and LMH”.
“We will have to learn the racing style of the WEC, while we know how the American ones work since we did them last year. We will also rely on our friends at Chevrolet, who have contested the last two seasons in the WEC. We are building a team brand new company based in Germany, so that’s a big challenge for us.”
#02 Cadillac Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac V-LMDh: Earl Bamber, Alex Lynn, Richard Westbrook, #25 BMW Team RLL BMW M Hybrid V8: Connor De Phillippi, Nick Yelloly, Sheldon van der Linde, Colton Herta
Photo by: Richard Dole / Motorsport Images
The 24h of Daytona, where the Cadillacs built on Dallara chassis showed good consistency at their debut, also served to gather initial information on everything, including the Michelin tyres.
Since last year’s presentation, the V-LMDh has grinded km in the tests and the tests have not stopped even after the first round of the IMSA SportsCar Championship held in January, trying to better prepare for the appointment on the weekend of 17 -18 March, when in addition to the 1000 Miglia of the WEC there will also be the 12h of Sebring IMSA.
“With such high minimum tire pressure at Daytona, it was difficult to evaluate the car, but I think the tires will be very resilient; we’ve seen some great double stints at Daytona and probably Sebring too, so it’ll be an interesting race to this point of view”.
“I know our IMSA team did some testing the other day and I think they’ve made good progress. But as this is the development team, we haven’t worked on performance, so now we can start looking at those as well. And I think it’s getting better.”
“Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to get to this point as a WEC team, so we have to work well together with both teams that Cadillac has. But I think it will be an advantage for us to have both IMSA and WEC teams racing to the same end. week”.
#02 Cadillac Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac V-LMDh: Earl Bamber, Alex Lynn, Richard Westbrook
Photo by: Jake Galstad / Motorsport Images
The US experience is on Cadillac’s side, which in Sebring will have a few more cards to play against teams that have never raced (or even tried) on the Florida track.
But Bamber points out that in such a high-level series the only certainty is that there will be a lot of sweat to succeed against rivals of this caliber, so the only thing to do is concentrate on doing your job well.
“Cadillac has been very strong in the past at Sebring in the DPi era. We have been very good on American street circuits, such as Long Beach and Detroit. I think it will be a good event, because we have raced at this track often. Obviously, a great The goal for us is to be successful at Le Mans, and then when we go to the other circuits we’ll have the chance to test. It’s a new category that I think everyone has to learn something from.”
“As the season progresses, we will see different strengths on different circuits for the various cars. We saw it in GT and I think we will see it here too. The race will be very close. We saw it at Daytona with the regulations, I think that ACO and IMSA have done a great job, especially with regard to the LMDh cars, which are very close to each other and it will be a very close battle”.
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