Bamber: Cadillac “Far Away” from Challenging for Wins

Earl Bamber admits Cadillac has a significant amount of work to do to close up to its Hypercar rivals in the FIA World Endurance Championship, noting that the brand ‘seems to be far away’ from challenging for race wins in the series’ expanded top class.

Bamber and co-driver Alex Lynn sit 14th in the Hypercar drivers’ standings after the 6 Hours of Imola, having picked up a point for a 10th place finish in the rain-affected round at the Emilia Romagna circuit.

The New Zealander admitted that Cadillac was left with question marks after Imola as it looks to move up the pecking order in the increasingly competitive Hypercar field.

“We just never managed to make the tires work in Imola and we just never really had any great general speed all week,” Bamber told Sportscar365.

“We had a test there, where we were actually not bad, but we could never manage to replicate the same feeling with the car or the same performance.”

The discrepancy between the testing indication and the performance during the race has left the American squad puzzled, Bamber hinted.

“We’d like to try and win a race, that’s what we’re here to do each week,” he said. “But at the moment we seem to be far away from that. It’s something that we’re trying to work out.

“Obviously we had good pace at Imola when we did the test, which would have put us somewhere in the ballpark, but we couldn’t manage to make it work.

“So that’s probably the biggest thing that we need to understand at the moment.”

A difficult Imola race came after a disqualification from the Qatar 1812km for non-compliant bodywork, which stripped the team of a notable points haul in the season opener as the No. 2 Cadillac V-Series.R initially finished fourth.

“The points loss at Qatar definitely is going to impact our season greatly because it was a ten-hour race and it’s a race for additional points as well,” he said.

“It’s a shame. We always knew that it was going to be a really tough season with one car, obviously fourth place in the Qatar would have set us up really nicely.

“We’d still be fourth or fifth in the drivers’ championship. It’s a tough one. Hopefully we can grab some more points here.”

Bamber remained on the fence about Cadillac’s chances at Spa, where it finished fifth overall a year ago.

“We were okay in quali last year, but I’m not sure we were great in the race pace last year, to be honest,” he said.

“We definitely didn’t have anything for like Ferrari and stuff like that. So we have to see. We sort of look middle of the pack just now.”

Bamber pointed to tire degradation as one area where he fears Cadillac has lost ground compared to rival squads.

A complicating factor in that is the weather, as current weather forecasts predict ambient temperatures as high as 23 degrees Celsius (73 degrees Fahrenheit) on Saturday – much higher than last year’s rain-hit contest.

With Spa already a track tough on tires, tire durability is likely to play an even bigger role in proceedings.

“We were pretty good, but the last few races we’ve definitely struggled, and I think we need to step up the game on that compared to some of our competitors,” Bamber said.

“They seem to have made a decent step, especially Ferrari.

“I think [on] the double stint, you’ll see who’s got a really, really strong car around here, because obviously the double stint with the high wear will be more prevalent.

“If it’s this hot with only the medium compound, I think it’s going to be quite a challenge for everybody.”