Front row start for Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA at COTA  September 5th, 2026 – Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA will start the Lone Star Le Mans in second position, for the latest round of the FIA World Endurance Championship. Seventeen cars took to the track for the twelve minutes of the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) Hypercar qualifying, and with LM GT3 qualifying session having occurred ahead of Hypercar qualifying, the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) surface was rubbered-in nicely. However, it would be the hot surface temperature that would be the biggest element the drivers had to contend with as they tried to keep their tyres in the optimum performance window. Aitken, in the No.38 progressed to Hyperpole. In one of the closest contested qualifying sessions this season, Aitken took provisional pole after his first lap in Hyperpole and was on the way to improving in his second when Giovinazzi displaced him by a few tenths of a second. The deltas were positive and Aitken was set to make the improvements needed in his second lap to take the No.38’s first pole of the season, only to set an identical lap time to Giovinazzi: a 1:52.445. As the laps matched to a thousandth of a second, the car that set the time first got positioned ahead giving the No.38 second on the starting grid for the Lone Star Le Mans. Despite a strong showing in FP3, the No.12 had a difficult qualifying session and was unable to progress to Hyperpole. The No. 12 will line up 15th in class. The No.12 car will be driven by Will Stevens, Norman Nato and Ricky Taylor and the No.38 car will be driven by Jack Aitken, Sebastian Bourdais and Earl Bamber. The race is scheduled for 1300 local time on Sunday September 6th. |
| Front row start for Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA at COTA September 5th, 2026 – Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA will start the Lone Star Le Mans in second position, for the latest round of the FIA World Endurance Championship. Seventeen cars took to the track for the twelve minutes of the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) Hypercar qualifying, and with LM GT3 qualifying session having occurred ahead of Hypercar qualifying, the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) surface was rubbered-in nicely. However, it would be the hot surface temperature that would be the biggest element the drivers had to contend with as they tried to keep their tyres in the optimum performance window. Aitken, in the No.38 progressed to Hyperpole. In one of the closest contested qualifying sessions this season, Aitken took provisional pole after his first lap in Hyperpole and was on the way to improving in his second when Giovinazzi displaced him by a few tenths of a second. The deltas were positive and Aitken was set to make the improvements needed in his second lap to take the No.38’s first pole of the season, only to set an identical lap time to Giovinazzi: a 1:52.445. As the laps matched to a thousandth of a second, the car that set the time first got positioned ahead giving the No.38 second on the starting grid for the Lone Star Le Mans. Despite a strong showing in FP3, the No.12 had a difficult qualifying session and was unable to progress to Hyperpole. The No. 12 will line up 15th in class. The No.12 car will be driven by Will Stevens, Norman Nato and Ricky Taylor and the No.38 car will be driven by Jack Aitken, Sebastian Bourdais and Earl Bamber. The race is scheduled for 1300 local time on Sunday September 6th. |
| What they’re saying:No. 38 Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA, Jack Aitken: “I didn’t think it would be that close to pole! Can’t get much closer than that! P2 is a very good position for us to start tomorrow. In these hot conditions it has been tough to get more than one lap out of the tyres, but the team did a great job to fine tune things after FP3 and we’ve put ourselves on the front foot for tomorrow so we’ll see how it goes.” No.12 Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA, Norman Nato: “A very difficult qualifying. I don’t really know what happened yet, we still need to investigate. This morning we were quite competitive in free practice, we ended up P6 and had a few tenths to find. So we just tried to optimise and make a couple of changes for qualifying. Unfortunately it didn’t work out at all for some reason which I don’t have the answer for yet. I lost a lot of lap time compared to this morning. It caught us a little bit by surprise, to be honest, so we need to investigate and try our best for tomorrow.” Cadillac Racing Programme Manager, Keely Bosn: “Today we performed extremely well despite the heat. I think the field today that we saw in qualifying was extremely tight and Cadillac came out there on top, setting an identical lap time to pole. Right now, we’re showing a lot of promise for the race tomorrow. We’ll work on our overall strategy for both cars tonight, their set-ups, and we’ll see how things go tomorrow here in our home country.” |