No. 40 WTR Cadillac Undergoes Major Engineering Shakeup

Photo: John Dagys

The No. 40 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac V-Series.R entry has undergone a wholesale engineering change for this year, with many of the new hires working together for the first time at this weekend’s Roar Before the Rolex 24.

The Jordan Taylor, Louis Deletraz and Colton Herta-driven GTP car has four new engineers in total, as well as multiple new mechanics.

Former Lamborghini LMDh project manager Marco Gariboldi, who before then worked at AF Corse in an engineering capacity, has taken over as race engineer, with Sam Gioia, an ex-aerodynamicist for Team RLL, joining as the car’s performance engineer.

Andrew Medina, another former RLL employee, has become the No. 40 Cadillac’s systems engineer, while the No. 40 entry also has a new GM performance engineer.

WTR’s No. 10 Cadillac features a largely unchanged engineering team, except for a new performance engineer.

The majority of the new WTR staff were unable to start in their positions until this week due to non-compete clauses according to Jordan Taylor.

“We had a lot of people leave at a bad time, I’d say,” he told Sportscar365. “It dropped us after the last test, which wasn’t great.

“A lot of them were planned to come in, but it is a lot [at once]. It would have been nice to start at the November [Daytona] test with all the new people.

“With how contracts are these days and non-competes, by the time these guys could actually start was only now.

“We couldn’t do our COTA test [in early December] with any of the new guys. Andrew (systems engineer) was the only [new] one that was with us and Ashley.

“But everyone on the 40 car, this weekend’s the first time we’re all actually working together.”

Taylor said he hopes to be able to hit the ground running with Friday’s first day of testing at Daytona International Speedway.

“They came to my sim test last week,” he said. “So we at least started the process there and we’ve been on calls for weeks. But hands on, this will be the first weekend.

“We’re excited. I think they’re all great guys. We had a big team dinner [on Wednesday night] to start the relationship.

“We’re way ahead of where we were last year with the car.

“We feel like we’re in a good place. We should just be able to get to work and work on communication more than pure car performance this weekend.”

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John