Cadillac Racing World Endurance Championship Driver Lineup Unveiled
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Cadillac Racing has confirmed the lineup for the World Endurance Championship (WEC). Earl Bamber, Alex Lynn and seasoned veteran Richard Westbrook will be racing in the FIA World Endurance Championship Hypercar class with the all-new Cadillac V-LMDh race car.
The 2023 World Endurance Championship season begins March 17th with the 1,000 Miles of Sebring. The drivers of the Cadillac racing prototype will also compete in the Grand Touring Prototype class at the Rolex 24 At Daytona in January.
“We look forward to new challenges by entering the V-LMDh in the World Endurance Championship,” said Cadillac Global Vice President Rory Harvey. “Bringing together a world-class team of drivers is paramount to our success next year and Cadillac Racing has accomplished that.”
Indeed, Cadillac has secured an elite roster of drivers. Bamber has two overall wins at Le Mans and was the 2019 IMSA GTLM champion. Lynn won the LMGTE Pro class at Le Mans in 2020 and also took LMGTE Pro class victories at Spa in 2017 and 2018. Westbrook is an 11-time IMSA race winner and earned a class victory in the Rolex 24 At Daytona in 2018.
“I’m really happy to continue at Chip Ganassi Racing and Cadillac. Looking forward to fighting for world championship and another Le Mans victory,” said Bamber.
“I’m absolutely thrilled to continue with Cadillac and Chip Ganassi Racing. It’s a huge honor to drive for Chip in any capacity but certainly on a full factory sports car program, it’s seriously cool,” Alex Lynn stated.
Richard Westbrock remarked, “It’s a really exciting time to be a sports car drivers when you have all of the top manufacturers throwing everything at it. I personally enjoy helping develop cars and I’m excited for the beginning of Cadillac’s V-LMDh program.”
Like the current Cadillac DPi.VR, the Cadillac LMDh prototype – which was previewed back in February – will utilize a spec chassis provided by Italian manufacturer Dallara. More information on the Cadillac LMDh race car should come to light as its competition debut in 2023 approaches.
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Looking forward to Le Mans 2023
This is so cool. It is about time gm got serious about racing and it should be the gm flag bearer Cadillac not Chevrolet to do it. I still remember as a teenager watching TV on an early Sunday morning when the station switched over to the end of the Le Mans race to announce that Ford kicked everyone’s ass and won. I hope that Cadillac could duplicate the effort. Too bad the chassis isn’t manufactured in the U.S.
And to all of the Barra haters out there she at least had the balls to get into the race instead of just standing on the sidelines. She has oil running through her veins as I’m sure that the shareholders don’t want to waste money on racing programs.
a) both Cadillac and Chevrolet are in the WEC and Le Mans races. Chevrolet Corvette in the GT class.
b) There is a vehicle class at Le Mans which requires to use this Dallara chassis. This year this was the LMP2, and the cars had also to use one specific engine, that is why the the predecessor of this Cadillac did not start at Le Mans, because GM wanted to show the power of their own engine. The Cadillac starts in V-LMDh.
c ) This is apparently a different class again than the one the Peugeot 8×9 is starting in, since they use, as far as I understand it correctly, a self developed chassis. The Peugeot car starts in the top class “Le Mans Hypercar (LMH)”, the successort to the LMP1 class, while what Cadillac enters in is the successor to the LMP2 class
Anyway, it will become interesting. I am looking forward to it.
The Cadillac is developed to IMSA’s LMDh class specs. LMDh is the same level as WEC’s Hypercar class and will compete for the overall win at LeMans.
But within the “Hypercar” class there are still two classes:
LMH (Le Mans Hypercar, introduced from 2021)
LMDh (Le Mans Daytona h, introduced from 2022)
One important difference is that LMDh requires the manufacturer to use the chassis of one of 4 suppliers. I quote;
>
In LMDh, the backbone of the car – i.e the whole car minus the internal combustion engine, and the hybrid system – will be supplied by one of four chassis manufacturers: Dallara, Ligier, Multimatic or Oreca.
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The "minus the internal combustion" is the main difference to the old LMP2, which Cadillac refused to race in, because they wanted to use their own engine,
The LMH class apperently gives the constructor much more freedom to build the car to their own specs,
Quotes are from
fiawec with com and then /en/classes/32
Yep, you are correct. My point was that Cadillac (and other LMDh teams) will be fighting for the overall win. It’s not a P2 class car.
Wow, – Observer, great reply. You are very knowledgeable about gm racing (I’m not) and either work in the business or work for gm. If you do not work for either you need to get a hobby (jesting, sorry).
So how did the Corvettes do this year at Le Mans? I think that I know the answer to this one.
I sincerely hope that the Cadillac racing team kicks the Ferrari, Porsche, Mercedes and whomever else’s butts this year. The EU manufactures are getting too arrogant.
I’m not really knowleadgeable, but I have the habit to go deep into the subjects which I am interested in. And the 24 hour race at Le Mans, France, is something which I find fascinating. There is the real test for the basic law of automobile racing: to finish first, you have first to finish.
And this race on the 13 km circuit, of which the larger part are regular public roads, which are closed for the occasion and integrated into the race circuit , is the ultimate test of man and machine, with “man” meaning 3 drivers and a whole team of mechanics and engineers and mathematicians and managers and what have you.
And to finish first, you have first to finish: this one year hit the two leading Toyota LMP1 cars very hard (or was it only one remaining?). Anyway, in the last round, the car developed a technical problem, was only limping, and did not finish. Good willing people had proclaimed that the Toyota car was the “real” winner, but the basic law says: to finish first, you have first to finish.
In order to be able to understand the commentws of the TV crew, I try to understand the technicaliteis of the 4 different classes of automobiles, and this year there are big changes in the reglement of this series of endurance races.
To answer your question of how the 2 Corvettes performed last year: one of the two was withdrawn with technical problems, and the other was kicked out of the race by a very unfortunate accident: three cars came out of a curve, they came abreast. The middle one tried to move away from the one to his right, but then crashed into the remaining Corvette which was leading in his class GTpro, but could not finish. I happened to watch the TV transmission of the race in that moment. Very bad. The driver of the middle car later went to the Corvette pit (garage) and apologized for his error. This was well received by everybody.
But for the Corvette team this still was a very bad outcome.
And to be remembered, you have to finish at all, even if not as first.
So it happens that a team considers their car so badly damaged that they consider the car unfit to make still dozens of rounds on the circuit. So they keep the car in the pit, “repairing” it, only to send it out for a single and very last round, when the race is about to end, so that their car can be registered as having finished instead of having abandoned the race, to avoid the “DNF” (did not finish) mark.
When it comes to Le Mans the main key is experience and a solid team with proper funding. And a little luck. You may have the best and fastest car but if luck goes wrong you can be sitting it out.
Corvette last year ran out of luck for once. They had very fast cars and even with set backs were able to make up time and move to the front. The one car was damaged in the race and it could not be repaired. It lost the rear suspension.
The second car was lost in a high speed crash and was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. If both has finished they both has speed to have possibly have been 1-2.
The key to Corvette is Pratt and Miller racing. They are a very good and well prepared team.
Cadillac is going to use a proven chassis and they have Chip Gannassi racing who has IMSA experience but they will need to learn a bit for Le Mans as it is a bit different, They do have some odd rules.
Toyota has been the dominate team and they will be the favorite.
The keys to Le Mans is one be Fast, then Durable and if anything happens be prepared to fix the car fast.
It is actually a team sport, as most sports are today, even (or especially) marathon races and bicycle racing like Tour de France (teams of 9 members, where 8 work for the 9th).
Some people call Formula 1 race a competition in changing tires fast, with a very long run-up.
Lots of factors.
As I mentioned, Peugeot had developed a LMH car called 9×8. It was ready before last year’s Le Mans, but the first real race they took part in was the 6 hours of Monza on July 10 of this year, AFTER the Le Mans 24 hours (June 11+12, 2022). They found some problems, one car did not finish, but that race was not so public as the Le Mans 24 hours. That is another thing to consider for autombile manufacturers who race in order to sell cars: think about where you put your baby first before a big public to avoid bad publicity, because testing alone does not suffice for finding all the little gremlins in the car, only the real thing is the real test.
BTW: I will look up that new Le Mans/IMSA class thing. What I could read until now was not really clear to me. But I wont give up.