The Chevrolet Detroit Sports Car Classic wasn’t overly kind to the Corvette Racing teams on June 1st, 2024, but Cadillac Racing had the opposite view of the race. In fact, the luxury marque secured its fifth podium finish in five races thus far this season, thanks to a monumental effort from the No. 01 V-Series.R driven by Sebastien Bourdais and Renger van der Zande.
Bourdais qualified third in the No. 01 Cadillac Racing machine and paced the frontrunners throughout the race. With 72 minutes left in the 100-minute event, Bourdais wheeled into the pits to swap the controls to van der Zande, who managed to keep his nose clean in the closing laps to finish third on the streets of Detroit.
“Congratulations to the Cadillac Racing team and the No. 01 Cadillac V-Series.R on their podium finish in the Chevrolet Detroit Sports Car Classic,” said John Roth, global vice president of Cadillac. “It’s great to win on the streets of Detroit – our hometown and where Cadillac was founded more than 120 years ago.”
Van der Zande was pleased with his team’s performance. He said, “I think we should be very happy with P3. For the championship, it’s good points. I think we’re second in the championship now and closed the gap to the first ones. I would have liked a bit more speed in the car. We just lacked top speed to really attack him [race winner No. 10 Acura ARX-06].”
Meanwhile, Pipo Derani and Jack Aitken wheeled the No. 31 Cadillac V-Series.R qualified 10th, but wrapped up the race in sixth place.
“It’s a day that was damage limitation for us,” Derani said. “When we knew how qualifying went, we said we had to do something different to try to fight for the win. We did it but it wasn’t enough because we were then depending on a yellow to come out on top.”
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Comment
The entire race was extremely difficult for every entrant. Not getting wrecked by someone who did not brake or trying to pass by just pushing you out of the way was the track rule. The track was way too tight so the pit times ruled. One Corvette got hammered by and idiot and one broke early. Looking forward to Watkins Glen where real road racing takes place and not a slot car track for bumper cars.