The Chevrolet Detroit Sports Car Classic on June 1st, 2024 was kind to Cadillac Racing – in fact, the organization earned its fifth podium finish in five races thus far this season. The No. 01 V-Series.R driven by Sebastien Bourdais and Renger van der Zande came home third, and the second Caddy team didn’t do too shabby, either.
Bourdais qualified third in the No. 01 Cadillac Racing V-Series.R, proving its speed before the green flag fell. When the race started, he was able to keep pace with the leaders. With 72 minutes left in the 100-minute event, Bourdais swapped controls to van der Zande, who managed to keep his nose clean in the closing laps to finish third on the streets of Detroit.
“Congratulations to the Cadillac Racing team and the No. 01 Cadillac V-Series.R on their podium finish in the Chevrolet Detroit Sports Car Classic,” said John Roth, global vice president of Cadillac. “It’s great to win on the streets of Detroit – our hometown and where Cadillac was founded more than 120 years ago.”
Bourdais, proud of his team, said, “I had a pretty short stint. With a short format, you pit so early in the window to try and prevent yourself from getting caught out with yellows. We had a really, really late call and to get the cockpit ready for pitstop was almost impossible. Then, the earlier you pit the quicker you need the pitstop to be. So, it didn’t turn out the way we wanted but we salvaged a starting position at the end, which is not a bad day at all.”
Meanwhile, Pipo Derani and Jack Aitken qualified 10th in the No. 31 Cadillac V-Series.R , but crossed the line in sixth place.
“It’s a day that was damage limitation for us,” Derani said. “When we knew how qualifying went, we said we had to do something different to try to fight for the win. We did it but it wasn’t enough because we were then depending on a yellow to come out on top.”
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XJUG87
OK, finally an opportunity to understand… why is Cadillac involved in racing? None of this technology trickles down to any of their vehicles? I simply don’t understand why they have been here for what, 20 years? 15? They do very well in all their competitions but gm has the Vette alone as a performance vehicle and that car is a reverse engineered Ferrari.
Thank you in advance for your perspectives, I’ve been curious about this for years….