Photo: Kristof Vermeulen/MPS Agency
Sebastien Bourdais said there was “no better way” to end his chapter with Cadillac with a long-awaited first overall FIA World Endurance Championship win in Sunday’s season-ending 6 Hours of Monza.
Bourdais teamed with Jack Aitken and Earl Bamber to deliver Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA its first win since Sao Paulo 2025, while keeping the British squad’s streak of achieving a win in every WEC season it has contested, dating back to 2014.
The Frenchman took the middle stint of the race after Aitken took the No. 38 Cadillac V-Series.R into the lead and maintained the position before handing over to Bamber in what was a flawless run for the team.
“It was the last race for me with JOTA but also the end of a chapter with Cadillac,” said Bourdais. “It’s a bitter sweet moment but there was definitely no better way to end.
“It was quite frantic. My mirror was quite full a lot of the time. The team did a really good job.
“Jack took the lead very early on and thankfully that was the case because it was very much a track position kind of game.
“Then from there, the team just executed and we just had to make sure we hit the marks and the energy number and didn’t make any mistakes.
“It’s been a long time coming for the 38. I think over the last two seasons we’ve had plenty of pace in plenty of races. Unfortunately it never quite came together.
“Today was the day. I couldn’t be any happier for that. I don’t have all the words for it, to be honest. It’s a lot of feelings and emotions at the same time. I definitely couldn’t think of a better end and super proud of the whole effort.”
Bourdais added: “It’s almost been two years where we’ve been knocking at the door, we’ve been close, we thought we had some and then it just went away for one reason or another.
“It’s been quite frustrating at times… I feel like it took us a while to put all the pieces together and today was the day.
“It could have been at Le Mans as well. Obviously destiny decided otherwise, and I think to be very honest, Toyota was mega strong at the end of the race [at Le Mans], so it would have been a tall order.
“But today was the day. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the end of my chapter with GM and Cadillac. It’s even more meaningful and I’m definitely going to savor that one.”
Bamber’s closing stint turned into an energy saving contest, which saw the No. 36 Signatech Alpine A424 of Victor Martins close in on the Kiwi at stages, as the two cars were managing fuel.
“It was a really tough race,” said Bamber. “There was a lot of strategy going on. We had to conserve the tires in the beginning because we knew they were do a triple stint to the end.
“There was a splash concern, so we were always trying to get the extra lap. We were a little bit surprised that the Alpine managed to go one lap extra than us in the middle stint.
“They had a bit more fuel on board so we had to do a much bigger number. We pulled away by eight seconds, then they came back to us by three or four [seconds] but managed to hit the number.
“We were able to then free up and I think they over-consumed in the middle. Once it equalized, then I knew it was going to be relatively easy.
“We were able to maintain the gap at 3-5 seconds.
“It was a bit nervy there because if they had maintained consuming that sort of fuel number, then they would have probably got to back of us.”
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