Cadillac to Continue With Single Hypercar Entry Next Year

General Motors has confirmed that Cadillac will continue to be represented by a single full-season entry in the FIA World Endurance Championship’s Hypercar class next year.

Chip Ganassi Racing has operated one Cadillac V-Series.R in the current WEC season and that setup is set to continue, despite known consideration of an expansion to two cars.

GM motorsports competition engineering director Mark Stielow told Sportscar365 on a video call with reporters that cost was a key factor in the decision not to add a second entry to the Cadillac Hypercar stable.

“We’re going to have one car in the WEC next year, mainly just due to some cost constraints of this platform,” he said. “That’s how we ended up.”

Stielow acknowledged that “it’s definitely better” to have two cars for the full WEC season, like most other Hypercar outfits including Toyota, Ferrari, Porsche and Peugeot.

“It was a cost barrier,” he added. “At the end of the day, and I’m sure all my colleagues would agree, we all have to go to our boards of directors and get our budgets approved.

“General Motors and Chevy and Cadillac are fighting in a lot of areas so we have to balance out and keep all of our children happy and clothed. You have to make tough decisions sometimes.”

Cadillac’s current lineup of Earl Bamber, Alex Lynn and Richard Westbrook sit fifth in the FIA Hypercar World Endurance Drivers Championship with one race remaining.

They started the campaign with top-five finishes in the opening three races before achieving a podium at the 100th anniversary 24 Hours of Le Mans, where their entry was joined by cars from Cadillac’s IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship effort.

Stielow added that GM has not decided on whether CGR will again field its WEC operation in the Rolex 24 at Daytona, as it did last year in preparation for Hypercar.

“We’re still evaluating that,” he said. “We’re in the middle of doing a lot of testing both overseas and here [in the U.S.]. We’ll make that announcement soon.”

Cadillac will maintain its two-team approach between CGR and Action Express Racing in the WeatherTech Championship next year, with the latter having already announced its full-season driver pairing in August.

CGR has not confirmed its GTP lineup, although it’s believed Renger van der Zande and Sebastien Bourdais are likely to continue based on multi-year contracts.

When asked if there will be any deviation in the total number of Cadillacs racing in GTP, Stielow said: “We’re still, like a lot of my counterparts, grinding on the 2024 rollout.

“We haven’t announced that yet. We’ll have a similar setup like this year, like before, we’ll have a Chip Ganassi team and an Action Express team.

“The number of cars, I think, will still be two but we might flex things up a little bit for key races.”