Bourdais, van der Zande drive No. 01 Cadillac V-Series.R to victory |
The No. 31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac V-Series.R, co-driven by Pipo Derani and Alexander Sims, earned third place after starting fourth and reclaimed the GTP driver and team championship points lead. “It was a great weekend for Cadillac Racing with the No. 01 Cadillac leading the field home at Laguna Seca and the No. 31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac also getting a podium,” Cadillac Global Vice President Rory Harvey said. High resolution photos from WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca for editorial use Bourdais and van der Zande won three races in 2022 in the No. 01 Cadillac in the final season of DPi competition. Disappointment overrode prospects in the first three races of the IMSA season and in an FIA World Endurance Championship appearance two weeks earlier at Spa-Francorchamps. Even this weekend, a shunt in the first free practice session and an off-track adventure in the sand/gravel negated a proper qualifying simulation and Bourdais qualified sixth in the nine-car GTP field. |
No. 01 Cadillac V-Series.R Sebastien Bourdais: “Everyone knows how challenging the last couple of months have been since our Sebring retirement. It’s never fun to go through those phases, but it’s part of racing. It’s something you have to pull through. I think the whole group was starting to lose a little bit spirits, I’d say. So it’s really good that we’ve gotten our head out of it with a win today. The weekend started really bad again with a crash on Friday that compromised the amount of testing we had and data we got for long runs. It trickled down to Saturday because we didn’t get a qualifying sim, so the effort wasn’t that great to get sixth. The start was kind of chaotic and we ended up buried in seventh or eighth. The guys did a really good call on strategy and cycled us to third. Things were starting to look up at that point. The car was starting to come alive and the track gripped up. It felt good and I could start to push and run the two leaders down. Then the yellow came out and it put us all the way back to seventh. Renger came out and did it again! I couldn’t ask for a better teammate. When he’s put in those positions, I don’t think there is anybody better than him. He made some pretty critical passes to get us to the front and managed from there. I’m super happy for Cadillac. You could see the emotions running through everyone, and this sets up as best as possible going to Le Mans. We’ll try to carry that momentum.” Renger van der Zande: “Thanks to Seb for the nice words. We are a good team and are fantastic teammates with everyone. Chip Ganassi Racing and Cadillac with all the effort they are putting in, it’s days and nights of work. They aren’t sleeping much. So it’s amazing to pay it off with a win like this. Like Seb said, we cycled a few times to the front and the back. I love this place. Laguna Seca is one of the best racetracks. It’s a very interesting track for setup. The tire wear is high, and you need to set up the car for it. From a driver’s perspective, you need to manage it as well. Coming from a big shunt at Spa to win this race is what you call lows and highs! This is our Le Mans car. It’s going to Le Mans and it’s a winner. It’s a winning car that will get flown over to Le Mans and fight for the big one. Today, we’re going to celebrate a bit. There’s not much time to Le Mans to put everything in perspective that we learned today about the car, the engine, the hybrid, the braking and all the systems that in there. It’s so nice when we get a win like this. One of the tricks they gave me in the car gave me this win with braking. I’m really proud of the whole team. I was testing Tuesday at Portimao and then Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Laguna Seca. It’s been a good day and a good week.”No. 31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac V-Series.R Pipo Derani: “It was a good race. Happy for Cadillac with a win and on our side happy with my stint. IMSA racing is so unpredictable and there are so many things that can go into account. It was a good points day for us with the Whelen Engineering Cadillac. The whole team did a fantastic job and happy to go away with a podium. We continue to push this fight forward.” Alexander Sims: “Pipo was doing a fantastic job and had really good pace. I was given everything I could have been given to do the job, but ultimately I didn’t have the same pace as Pipo and I made two costly errors in terms of the restart and getting my tires up to temperature properly and Renger driving on the outside of me and then just being too cautious in traffic and Nick (Tandy) got around me. Good points day and nice to be on the podium.” |