| SEBRING, Fla. (March 20, 2026) – Jack Atiken and the No. 31 Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R run by Action Express Racing won the pole for the 74th running of the Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring. Atiken’s lap of 1:46.153 secured Cadillac’s sixth pole position at Sebring. “It’s one of the more fun sessions of the year,” Atiken said. “I love this track, we love this track. It’s usually been pretty kind to us, but equally we had a near miss last year so we kind of want to come back and claim it as our own. I loved it. The Whelen Cadillac was flying, and it gave me a lot of confidence. “I don’t think anyone gets a perfect lap around here as it’s a really tough track, but we were closest. We’re over the moon, but we still have some homework to do tonight, we’ve got plenty of competition and some of the other guys are very quick especially on the long runs. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.” |
| Filipe Albuquerque, driver of the No. 10 Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing V-Series.R qualified third with a lap of 1:46.298, while Louis Deletraz, driver of the No. 40 Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing V-Series.R qualified fifth with a lap of 1:46.421. Cadillac Racing has recorded five overall victories, including three in a row (2021-2023), and finished runner-up in 2024 and 2018 in the races at Sebring since joining IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship prototype competition in 2017. The 2023 victory by the No. 31 Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R – in Aitken’s second IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship start – came from the pole. The No. 31 entry campaigned by Action Express Racing also earned the pole in 2024. |
| The Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring is set for 10:10 a.m. ET on Saturday from Sebring International Raceway. It will stream live on Peacock with television coverage on NBCSN from 5 to 10:30 p.m. IMSA Radio will stream live audio coverage on XM 206, Channel 996 on the SiriusXM app and IMSA.com. Jack Aitken, No. 31 Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R run by Action Express Racing: Q. Obviously you look at the times there, there’s not quite 3/10ths first to fourth. Top nine within a second. What did you have to do to get the pole here today? How competitive do you expect this field to be? “Very. From what we saw in practice, it was some really quick cars out there. We were up there. I think we were trying to find a little bit of something, especially as the conditions were cooling off. It’s one of the coolest Sebring’s that we’ve had for a few years. Just getting the tire to work with you is a bit of a job. We know that we’re relatively strong in qualifying. Again, I have a fantastic car. The Whelen Cadillac was giving me a lot of confidence. It’s a really tough lap around here, so I don’t think anybody gets a perfect lap, but we were closest. It’s a lot of fun. I enjoyed it a lot. We’re going to keep doing our homework tonight and expect we’re going to have some stiff competition tomorrow.” Q. A lot of GTP teams have been not concerned but cautious about the tires usage this weekend because there’s 11 sets. Same number as last year. With the new tire and everything, does that cross your mind?“Yeah, it’s always a concern. The way the race runs, it kind of pushes you to a double stint early in the race when it’s hot, which is pretty unpleasant. We’ve had to do it in previous years, and it’s not been a major issue. It’s been unpleasant for everybody, but you’re all in the same boat. This year we are going into a bit of the unknown because nobody has pushed that much mileage on the tire in practice this weekend. We’ll see. I’m sure it will be fine. The new Michelin has been a pretty nice little upgrade from the previous tire, fixed a few issues that we had. I wouldn’t expect the degradation is going to be especially worse. Like I said, it’s been one of the coolest Sebring’s, so that’s going to help us as well just to control the tire temps.” Q. Have you guys or JOTA done any long runs on the new tire in testing before?“We have. But not at Sebring. And Sebring is a pretty brittle track for that. Personally I’m expecting it to go in a similar vein to previous years, but we’ll be prepared if it looks like it’s going to go sideways late in the double stint.” Q. How much more do you think you had in that?“In a perfect world where I get tons of laps with the tire at its peak, there’s probably another half second in there, realistically. Like I said, it’s a really tough lap because of the bumps. The way you have to set the car up around here is going to be a bit on a knife-edge. Going through turn one, sunset, even today we got a big tailwind going through 15 and 16, it’s really tough to keep the car on the track and four wheels going in the right direction. I think we saw a few spins from previous sessions. It’s going to be the same up and down the grid. Everybody will have a similar story, I’m sure.” Q. Daytona, a lot of y’all talk about qualifying doesn’t seem to matter as much. Is it a different story here? Does qualifying matter more here?“Maybe matters twice as much. 24 hours to a 12-hour (smiling). But still not a lot. No, I think it’s going to be fairly inconsequential. It’s lovely to be on pole. It’s nice to show how the team is working, putting out a good car, to get the bragging rights on some points. At the end of the day, we started last in ’25 because of an issue, and we were into the lead in less than two hours with the help of yellows and stuff. It’s kind of neither here nor there. We saw a lot of cars further down the grid were very quick in night practice and over longer runs yesterday. Fully expect they’re going to make their way through, as well.” Q. At the end of Daytona, you were incredibly upset with how close you were. How do you put that behind you, turn the page?“Luckily I was over it a week or two after (smiling). It always hurts immediately after because you just get out the car, there’s lots of ifs, woulds, maybes. I think realistically, looking back at the race with the benefit of hindsight, the winners did a fantastic job over the whole race and were fairly dominant. We did well to run them as close as we did. This a whole new weekend. I’m not really carrying any of that baggage or anything like that.”Q. How confident are you in the pace when the Porsches were kind of showing their hand, being quickest in the practices leading up until today?“I think, like I said earlier, we know that we’re relatively strong in qualifying. It’s been the trend over previous years. Even with the Evo upgrades and stuff we have working on the car now, I think it seems to be similar. One and a half pole positions this year. I’ll say two (smiling). I’ve still got the trophy. Definitely we’re aware of how strong some of the other cars are, like the ones you mentioned. They don’t show any signs of dropping out of the fight. If anything, they tend to somehow get quicker as the weekend goes on. I’m not taking much stock from what we’ve just seen in qualifying. I believe they’ll be right there from quite early in the race. We’ve got some homework to do still I think to find what we need to win this thing. That’s all we can do, yeah.” |
| Filipe Albuquerque, No. 10 Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing V-Series.R: “I’m very happy with the performance in qualifying. P3. Obviously we wanted to be P1, but I think it shows we have been evolving the outright performance of our car at Wayne Taylor Racing. What is crazy is what a difference a year makes in understanding the Cadillac V-Series.R. I’ve been confident the whole weekend. We’ve been finetuning the car and I’ve been enjoying the work process within the team before the result. Our results were good; I missed pole position by a tenth or so. We will take that for the 12 hours, especially at Sebring where the conditions are so different plus we’ll be racing in the night. So let’s go onto race day.” |
| Louis Delétraz, No. 40 Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing V-Series.R: “We qualified top five for Sebring and again for Sebring it’s not the most important as it’s a 12 Hour race. We worked hard on the race car and we’re pretty happy and confident for the race tomorrow. The car feels good on the bumps and we have full focus on the race with no mistakes and try to move forward.” |
| No. 31 Cadillac Wins Pole for 74th Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring |
| Media Resources: Images | Media Advances | Cadillac Newsroom |
| SEBRING, Fla. (March 20, 2026) – Jack Atiken and the No. 31 Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R run by Action Express Racing won the pole for the 74th running of the Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring. Atiken’s lap of 1:46.153 secured Cadillac’s sixth pole position at Sebring. “It’s one of the more fun sessions of the year,” Atiken said. “I love this track, we love this track. It’s usually been pretty kind to us, but equally we had a near miss last year so we kind of want to come back and claim it as our own. I loved it. The Whelen Cadillac was flying, and it gave me a lot of confidence. “I don’t think anyone gets a perfect lap around here as it’s a really tough track, but we were closest. We’re over the moon, but we still have some homework to do tonight, we’ve got plenty of competition and some of the other guys are very quick especially on the long runs. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.” |
| Filipe Albuquerque, driver of the No. 10 Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing V-Series.R qualified third with a lap of 1:46.298, while Louis Deletraz, driver of the No. 40 Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing V-Series.R qualified fifth with a lap of 1:46.421. Cadillac Racing has recorded five overall victories, including three in a row (2021-2023), and finished runner-up in 2024 and 2018 in the races at Sebring since joining IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship prototype competition in 2017. The 2023 victory by the No. 31 Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R – in Aitken’s second IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship start – came from the pole. The No. 31 entry campaigned by Action Express Racing also earned the pole in 2024. |
| The Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring is set for 10:10 a.m. ET on Saturday from Sebring International Raceway. It will stream live on Peacock with television coverage on NBCSN from 5 to 10:30 p.m. IMSA Radio will stream live audio coverage on XM 206, Channel 996 on the SiriusXM app and IMSA.com. Jack Aitken, No. 31 Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R run by Action Express Racing: Q. Obviously you look at the times there, there’s not quite 3/10ths first to fourth. Top nine within a second. What did you have to do to get the pole here today? How competitive do you expect this field to be? “Very. From what we saw in practice, it was some really quick cars out there. We were up there. I think we were trying to find a little bit of something, especially as the conditions were cooling off. It’s one of the coolest Sebring’s that we’ve had for a few years. Just getting the tire to work with you is a bit of a job. We know that we’re relatively strong in qualifying. Again, I have a fantastic car. The Whelen Cadillac was giving me a lot of confidence. It’s a really tough lap around here, so I don’t think anybody gets a perfect lap, but we were closest. It’s a lot of fun. I enjoyed it a lot. We’re going to keep doing our homework tonight and expect we’re going to have some stiff competition tomorrow.” Q. A lot of GTP teams have been not concerned but cautious about the tires usage this weekend because there’s 11 sets. Same number as last year. With the new tire and everything, does that cross your mind?“Yeah, it’s always a concern. The way the race runs, it kind of pushes you to a double stint early in the race when it’s hot, which is pretty unpleasant. We’ve had to do it in previous years, and it’s not been a major issue. It’s been unpleasant for everybody, but you’re all in the same boat. This year we are going into a bit of the unknown because nobody has pushed that much mileage on the tire in practice this weekend. We’ll see. I’m sure it will be fine. The new Michelin has been a pretty nice little upgrade from the previous tire, fixed a few issues that we had. I wouldn’t expect the degradation is going to be especially worse. Like I said, it’s been one of the coolest Sebring’s, so that’s going to help us as well just to control the tire temps.” Q. Have you guys or JOTA done any long runs on the new tire in testing before?“We have. But not at Sebring. And Sebring is a pretty brittle track for that. Personally I’m expecting it to go in a similar vein to previous years, but we’ll be prepared if it looks like it’s going to go sideways late in the double stint.” Q. How much more do you think you had in that?“In a perfect world where I get tons of laps with the tire at its peak, there’s probably another half second in there, realistically. Like I said, it’s a really tough lap because of the bumps. The way you have to set the car up around here is going to be a bit on a knife-edge. Going through turn one, sunset, even today we got a big tailwind going through 15 and 16, it’s really tough to keep the car on the track and four wheels going in the right direction. I think we saw a few spins from previous sessions. It’s going to be the same up and down the grid. Everybody will have a similar story, I’m sure.” Q. Daytona, a lot of y’all talk about qualifying doesn’t seem to matter as much. Is it a different story here? Does qualifying matter more here?“Maybe matters twice as much. 24 hours to a 12-hour (smiling). But still not a lot. No, I think it’s going to be fairly inconsequential. It’s lovely to be on pole. It’s nice to show how the team is working, putting out a good car, to get the bragging rights on some points. At the end of the day, we started last in ’25 because of an issue, and we were into the lead in less than two hours with the help of yellows and stuff. It’s kind of neither here nor there. We saw a lot of cars further down the grid were very quick in night practice and over longer runs yesterday. Fully expect they’re going to make their way through, as well.” Q. At the end of Daytona, you were incredibly upset with how close you were. How do you put that behind you, turn the page?“Luckily I was over it a week or two after (smiling). It always hurts immediately after because you just get out the car, there’s lots of ifs, woulds, maybes. I think realistically, looking back at the race with the benefit of hindsight, the winners did a fantastic job over the whole race and were fairly dominant. We did well to run them as close as we did. This a whole new weekend. I’m not really carrying any of that baggage or anything like that.”Q. How confident are you in the pace when the Porsches were kind of showing their hand, being quickest in the practices leading up until today?“I think, like I said earlier, we know that we’re relatively strong in qualifying. It’s been the trend over previous years. Even with the Evo upgrades and stuff we have working on the car now, I think it seems to be similar. One and a half pole positions this year. I’ll say two (smiling). I’ve still got the trophy. Definitely we’re aware of how strong some of the other cars are, like the ones you mentioned. They don’t show any signs of dropping out of the fight. If anything, they tend to somehow get quicker as the weekend goes on. I’m not taking much stock from what we’ve just seen in qualifying. I believe they’ll be right there from quite early in the race. We’ve got some homework to do still I think to find what we need to win this thing. That’s all we can do, yeah.” |
| Filipe Albuquerque, No. 10 Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing V-Series.R: “I’m very happy with the performance in qualifying. P3. Obviously we wanted to be P1, but I think it shows we have been evolving the outright performance of our car at Wayne Taylor Racing. What is crazy is what a difference a year makes in understanding the Cadillac V-Series.R. I’ve been confident the whole weekend. We’ve been finetuning the car and I’ve been enjoying the work process within the team before the result. Our results were good; I missed pole position by a tenth or so. We will take that for the 12 hours, especially at Sebring where the conditions are so different plus we’ll be racing in the night. So let’s go onto race day.” |
| Louis Delétraz, No. 40 Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing V-Series.R: “We qualified top five for Sebring and again for Sebring it’s not the most important as it’s a 12 Hour race. We worked hard on the race car and we’re pretty happy and confident for the race tomorrow. The car feels good on the bumps and we have full focus on the race with no mistakes and try to move forward.” |