Cadillac: Experience of New Tires ‘Not a Huge Advantage’

Cadillac Racing has downplayed the advantage of having raced on the new Michelin Pilot Sport Endurance tires in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, describing it as a “benefit” but “not as much as you would expect.”

Hypercar manufacturers that only compete in the FIA World Endurance Championship have previously expressed concern about being on the back foot compared to rivals that have already raced on the new rubber at Daytona and Sebring.

But Cadillac’s chief engineer Jeromy Moore says the information gathered about the tires from the pair of Wayne Taylor Racing-run V-Series.Rs and the Action Express Racing machine in the opening two WeatherTech Championship rounds is of limited use for Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA in the WEC because of the unique characteristics of those American circuits.

“They’re quite different races,” said Moore. “The tire is really the interaction between itself and the ground, the tarmac, and Sebring is quite different in terms it’s a concrete surface.

“It’s a benefit because, every time you test, you learn but it’s not as much as you would expect or as much as we would learn if we tested here [at Imola] three weeks before. That’s always the biggest one. We wanted to do that but we couldn’t logistically.

“It’s learning [from Daytona and Sebring] but we haven’t got a huge advantage over the field because of it.”

JOTA had intended to test at Imola in early April but those plans were scuppered amid the fallout from the conflict in the Middle East, with the team having been testing in Qatar shortly before Israel and the U.S. launched air strikes on Iran.

“We tested in Qatar, everybody came home for the weekend and the world fell apart,” explained JOTA co-founder Sam Hignett, when asked by Sportscar365 about the impact of the conflict.

“We were meant to be going to Bahrain the following week and we were very lucky we didn’t have any humans there, but all the kit was there [in the Middle East].

“Immediately after Qatar [test], everybody air freights here and we would’ve tested here but again that didn’t happen so it’s left it a bit upside down in terms of testing.”

Moore described being unable to test at Imola as a “bit of a setback” especially as JOTA gets to grips with the revised V-Series.R for this year.

Although JOTA, like all of the other WEC teams, was able to get all of its race equipment to Imola in time for this week’s Prologue and opening round of the season, Hignett says it still has test items stranded in the Middle East.

“It went pretty well, all things considered,” said Hignett of the logistics. “We had our kit about ten days ago but we’ve still got test kit spread around – we’ve got a container in Dubai still and a container at Bahrain circuit that we’re working on getting back at the moment.

“But hats off to DHL for getting everybody here with all their kit. Only a couple of teams got containers a couple of days ago but generally it was all very well done.”