It is being bandied about that in 2025, with more competition coming to Le Mans Hypercar in FIA World Endurance and Grand Touring Prototype, in IMSA, Cadillac will be looking to upgrade the cars, and that is exactly what they intend to do. If you follow this blog, you'd have seen this being spoken about at length in an article from Racer magazine, that I put in the blog as a link for more sports car racing articles to peruse if you have time. Before we go any further, ICYMI, here is that article again.
The peculiar idea is the person who is speaking most about this is a chap who oversees things for the rival Cadillac team to Action Express, and that is Chip Ganassi Racing, who will have their IMSA GTP Cadillac on the grid, and another Cadillac in the FIA World Endurance Championship. Mitas, he is team manager at Ganassi's WEC operation.
Mitas explains that GM is doing the upgrades for the Cadillac as we speak. These will be seen in 2025, when the competition especially in IMSA is expected to stiffen even more. Cadillac will be on par with Porsche, Acura, BMW, but also with other brands that may cross over between IMSA and World Endurance where names like Lamborghini, Alpine, and Aston Martin, will appear. The new Lamborghini SC63 will debut at the 12 Hours of Sebring in March. The Alpine may be eligible next year, but it is difficult to say. We are going to surely see them in the WEC with a two-car factory team with their turbocharged Mecachrome V6 engines.
The Aston Martin Valkyrie will be the first so-called street legality based "Hypercar" to enter IMSA with another team, with The Heart of Racing. This beast is slated to gain power with no hybrid drive assistance, from a massive, 6.5 liter, naturally aspirated V12 engine! In addition to these new cars, Porsche with the V8 turbo powered 963, BMW with the V8 turbo powered M Hybrid V8, and Acura with the V6 turbo powered ARX-06 will also be in the fight. It is not at all clear, if Acura/Honda, will be even considering a program for global racing, because they have said that Formula 1 is their target, not endurance with a factory team.
Unlike the Aston Martin, which is a Hypercar that can cross over into IMSA due to them making cars available stateside, the other familiar Hypercars we see in the World Endurance Championship, in no way do they conform to the IMSA rules. These are cars such as the Le Mans winning Ferrari 499P, the Toyota GR010 Hybrid, the Peugeot 9X8. None of them are eligible. Toyota builds and sells cars here, but their car is not to the same rules. Ferrari, likewise. They sell cars worldwide, but, the car is built to a different regulations' standard. Peugeot, again, a different regulations standard, and they have not sold cars here in the United States, since the late 1980s. The 505 sedan and station wagons, and the 405 sedan and station wagons, which also went on to field a successful racing version in the Dakar Rally after years of their previous 205 Group B rally monster being dominant, and the 905 Group C racer ending that category of sports car racing, were extremely successful.
But alas, sacre bleu! None of this could change their sales fortunes here stateside. The 405 sedan was the car Peugeot said would be a revolution. But it did not sell, and Peugeot, one of the oldest automakers in the world were forced to head back to France and have only been selling cars in Europe and other places globally (but not the United States), for the past 35 years. So, this completely puts them out of the picture. Their parent group, Stellantis, oversees Chrysler. However, even after much success two decades ago with their Dodge Viper sports car in endurance racing including overall wins at the Rolex 24 and class wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans with Team Oreca, we will not see the Peugeot rebadged as a Chrysler, given the Viper's red with white stripes paint scheme, and dropped into the GTP class. It just will not happen.
However, in an LMDh sense, it is the Cadillac, possibly the Acura, the Alpine, the BMW, the Porsche, these cars are eligible to cross over between IMSA and World Endurance, which means, the competition both here stateside, and overseas, is going to get extremely stiff. Thinking back to Cadillac, though. The question remains, will reliability or performance be the focus? Can each area of the car, be optimized? Mr. Mitas believes all of these upgrades will inevitably come to the fore. Cadillac Director Laura Wontrop Klauser has the same feelings, that things will gradually fall into place. While I agree with Mr. Mitas' observations, I still believe that it is going to be Action Express, my friends who are the rival Cadillac team to the Chip Ganassi operation, that will reap the most benefits from what is to come. I still believe that we are the team with the best chance of scoring victories for Cadillac. Our team has the best driver lineups and also, the best and most solid crew of people overseeing and preparing the cars from Team Director Bob Johnson to Team Manager, Gary Nelson, Technical Director Ian Watt, Race Strategist Peter Baron, and all the way down through the other members of the team, we are the best in the business. The business, of winning, that is.
So, while I see Mr. Mitas' point about the car as a whole, it is going to be the red Whelen Cadillac, that I think, shall benefit the most, from these next phases of development from General Motors and the Cadillac brand. We Expect to Win, and we will see you all on the track, coming up soon, at Daytona this year in 2024 and again next year in 2025, and believe me, to our competition, you know who you are, when you see a bright red Cadillac with the Whelen logo and the #31 on the sidepod, in your rearview mirror, know we are here, to race you. We will race you fairly and cleanly, but we will race you and give you a run for all your money, nonetheless.
I believe, with the new upgrades to come in another year, as far as Cadillac is concerned, it will be AXR who are going to reap those benefits to the fullest extent possible and find an extra turn of speed. American ingenuity will be racing head-to-head against the best Europe and Japan have to offer, and it is going to be exciting. But, as I said, our rivals are going to be quite surprised by the sight of a red Cadillac flashing past them on the high banks at Daytona. That is for sure.
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