Bourdais drives to track record in No. 01 Cadillac V-Series.R; Derani second
MONTEREY, Calif. (May 11, 2024) – Cadillac Racing scored its fourth consecutive Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) pole and third front row lockout in qualifications for Sunday’s Motul Course de Monterey.
The recently repaved 2.238-mile, 11-turn WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca road course was conducive to quick lap times in two practice sessions and Sebastien Bourdais drove the No. 01 Cadillac V-Series.R to a track-record lap of 1 minute, 12.455 seconds in the 15-minute qual session.
Pipo Derani, who earned the pole the first three races, qualified second at 1:12.557 in the No. 31 Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R for the 2-hour, 40-minute race. Bourdais had started on the outside of the front row at Daytona to open the season and at Sebring, and qualified third at Long Beach.
“Congratulations to the No. 01 Cadillac V-Series.R team on securing the fourth pole position in as many races for Cadillac Racing in qualifying for the Motul Course de Monterrey,” said John Roth, Cadillac global vice president. “We are excited to get back on the track tomorrow and compete for Cadillac Racing’s second victory in a row this season and at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca.”
Bourdais, who earned his seventh IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship prototype pole, and teammate Renger van der Zande are coming off a dominating victory April 20 on the streets of Long Beach and will look to successfully defend their 2023 win at Laguna Seca. Bourdais and van der Zande, who has three victories at the track, started sixth last year.
Derani and co-driver Jack Aitken have recorded a pair of runner-up finishes this season and the No. 31 Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R placed third at Laguna Seca last year.
Cadillac is the lone GTP manufacturer to finish first or second in all three IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship races. The marque brand sits atop the GTP Manufacturer Championship standings.
Cadillac has claimed at least one podium spot in six of the seven races at Laguna Seca since joining IMSA prototype competition in 2017.
NBC will telecast the race live at 3 p.m. ET Sunday, May 12, with flag-to-flag streaming coverage on Peacock in the U.S. (outside the U.S. on IMSA.com/TVLive). Additionally, the race will be broadcast live on IMSA.com, RadioLeMans.com and SiriusXM (XM 206, Web/App 996).
Sebastien Bourdais: “I think we’ve been so close all year long. Daytona we made a little bit of a mistake on the tire pressures which sort of overshot when we needed them. Sebring we obviously got the red flag, and we had that lap in. Well, Long Beach we only got 4 laps so that was a big ask. The guys have done a really good job. It took us a little bit of a time to build that group but now that we’ve got it I couldn’t be happier for the whole crew. [What did the sim say? What were you expecting?] Definitely, I made a mistake up top, I locked up the right-front and almost didn’t make the corkscrew on that fast lap. I was watching the time compared coming out of the corkscrew and could see all the gain kind of fading away. That wasn’t a nice feeling but I kind of managed to pull myself in the last three corners and make it work. It was far from ideal, but I think everyone struggled to put it all together because when you have multiple fast laps like that it’s difficult to do that anyways. Hustling those big cars around, there is a lot of movement. You get so much more activity then when you’re like a second off, and managing traffic and stuff. The elevation, the banking, the compression, it definitely is a lot to take in to put that lap together. because you don’t have a lot of time to rehearse anything these days. We don’t have that speed session where we can rehearse a qually run at the end anymore. You always have traffic, so you never get a good picture of what the qually car is going to feel like. The car was great. I’m really happy for everybody. That would be good, as fun as it is to put these things on pole it doesn’t really mean a whole lot. I’ve got a great teammate in Renger, and I’ve got no doubts that if we keep our nose clean, we’ll be up top.”
Pipo Derani: “I’m actually happy with qualifying. Unfortunately, we didn’t quite get the perfect lap. We’re always in search of the perfect lap. But I think having missed two-thirds of the first practice put us a little bit on the back foot. But, nevertheless, I’m happy that the performance is there and with little adjustments just missing the fourth pole in a row. We’ve been extracting the most we can out of the car. The changes we made to the car for qualifying were spot on, so thank you to the engineering team. It’s a good car for the race. It’s another Cadillac front row, which is great.”
