JOTA ‘Still Growing Into’ Position for Victory With Cadillac

JOTA Sport technical director Tomoki Takahashi said the team is “still growing into” a position where they feel that they can fight for a FIA World Endurance Championship win ahead of this weekend’s 24 Hours of Le Mans.

The British squad, which joined forces with Cadillac for a two-car factory effort this year, has been one of the early contenders at Circuit de la Sarthe, with Sebastien Bourdais topping the time charts in Wednesday’s Free Practice 1 and Alex Lynn slotting the sister Hertz Team JOTA Cadillac V-Series.R into P1 in first qualifying.

However, Takahashi has taken a cautious approach, knowing the team is still in a learning mode with its new Hypercar class partnership.

“Given we have all the information from the IMSA side and from last year’s race, I don’t think we have a long list of excuses, frankly,” he told Sportscar365. “But we are definitely still growing into this. I don’t want to make it sound like I’m making excuses as to why we might not win.

“Operationally, we’ve done this a lot of times. But in terms of setup and how fast the car is, maybe we’re a step back. But I would rather approach it as if we’re at least in the fight, which I think we are, to an extent. We’re not ready to go home just yet.

“There’s a lot more to come from us.

“We were always targeting this race to be bang on, but I don’t think you can underestimate the task of getting up to speed with a new car.

“As much experience we have, it’s the small details where you find the performance, and how you manage those with the tire degradation, etc.

“Unfortunately, this takes time. The other Cadillac teams have been amazing at sharing information, but you still need to learn it yourself. Being told what to do and actually doing it are two different things.”

Lynn, who has been part of the Cadillac WEC program since its launch with Chip Ganassi Racing in 2023, believes they are “in the fight” although stressed that experience plays a lot at Le Mans.

“When you do the full WEC season, it does just help you be a bit more accustomed to the intricacies of what this race is,” he said. “Because they’re not really any different to a WEC event.

“This is that kind of race where experience does help you. I don’t think you necessarily go faster as a driver than year one, but you definitely just get better.

“To be fair, this is my third year in this car and it feels like a glove to me now, like an extension of my body really, driving this car and hearing that noise. I hear it in my sleep these days.”

Lynn spoke highly of the Sam Hignett-led operation but is also entering the weekend with somewhat reserved expectations.

“I think JOTA has always been a very good team, especially in LMP2,” he said. “They’ve won in that category a lot, and then also with the Porsche, they were extremely competitive.

“And then myself, with the Cadillac, this is my third year here at Le Mans with it. We got third on debut, which was great and then we had good promise last year. But at the same time, all the competition is improving.

“The amount of manufacturers here now is unprecedented. So really, to put yourself in a position to get a great result is going to take everything and more.

“I can’t deny, I believe, Ferrari and Toyota are very good. And that’s just to say that they are two teams performing extremely well in general, with cars that we know are just great cars.

“I’d say [we’re] in the fight. But we need to maximize our package. And I’d say that we didn’t do that on Sunday and we have got good steps to come because I’d say we’ve made a lot of positive changes since last year that we can maximize still.

“I think we’re a long way from maximizing what we’ve got. So that gives us some confidence knowing that we can chip away.”

Jamie Klein contributed to this report