Cadillac Disqualified from Qatar 1812km

The No. 2 Cadillac V-Series.R has been disqualified from the results of the FIA World Endurance Championship season opener in Qatar for non-compliant bodywork.

Earl Bamber, Alex Lynn and Sebastien Bourdais had initially finished fourth in the Qatar 1812km at Lusail International Circuit earlier this month.

However, they have now been removed from the results after a stewards report was published on Thursday stating that Chip Ganassi Racing had violated the LMDh technical regulations.

According to the report, a 3D scan performed at post-race scrutineering found discrepancies between the bodywork used at the event and the official bodywork CAD model supplied by Cadillac at the car’s homologation.

It was determined that the rear diffuser strakes fitted on both the left and right hand sides of the car were both fitted higher and misaligned than the nominal value from the CAD model, including the allowed tolerances.

After additional checks, stewards summoned team manager Stephen Mitas, who was able to produce evidence from Cadillac chassis partner Dallara.

This came in the form of a report stating that the infringement was the result of an error, with the parts having been delivered “without final quality control.”

The document further states that while the stewards considered there was no “intentional behaviour” from either Cadillac or Dallara, “irrespective of this, there is a violation of the technical regulations, which was to be penalised with a disqualification.”

In a statement supplied to Sportscar365 in the wake of the disqualification, Cadillac stated: “During the FIA World Endurance Championship race in Qatar on March 2, the rear diffuser strakes on the No. 2 Cadillac V-Series.R were unintentionally out of specification relative to the homologated height. We have cooperated with the FIA and ACO and accept their findings.”

Cadillac’s disqualification has seen the No. 83 AF Corse Ferrari 499P of Robert Kubica, Robert Shwartzman and Yifei Ye moved up to fourth, while the No. 7 Toyota GR010 Hybrid now rounds out the top five.

This story was updated at 12:30 p.m. CET (7:30 a.m. EDT) with a statement issued by Cadillac.