Cadillac has no chance to win Le Mans 24 Hours despite pole position

Sebastien Bourdais says Cadillac can’t hope for much more than a top-five finish at the Le Mans 24 Hours, despite a 1-2 on the grid in qualifying.

Cadillac Jota secured the first two spots on the grid for this weekend’s French classic, outperforming its competition in both Hyperpole sessions.

Jack Aitken (in the Cadillac Whelen car) and Sebastien Bourdais were fastest in Hyperpole 1 with the #311 and #38 cars, while Alex Lynn eventually took pole from Earl Bamber in the #12 and #38 entries.

No other car lapped within three tenths of the fastest Cadillac in either session.

Yet, while Lynn was ecstatic, a glum Bourdais faced the media following the session – with little hope for a good result in the race, and resentment towards rivals potentially sandbagging and the current impact of the Balance of Performance.

“Some people aren’t showing what they’re doing, what they can do,” Le Mans veteran Bourdais claimed. “We’ve seen two or three things we don’t like at all regarding some people’s performance, and clearly, they’re keeping their cards damn close to their chest.

“I’m afraid we’ll relive the same thing as last year on the straights. Once again, we’re not complaining about performance, we just want a chance to fight. Unfortunately, Le Mans is all about top speed. If they could just give us a little chance to fight in a lap time-neutral way, it would be nice.

“The thing is, in the race, if you’re making the difference in the Porsche curves in terms of lap time – nine times out of 10, you’ll have traffic there, so you can forget about that lap time. If you get overtaken anytime someone takes your slipstream but you can’t do likewise, it’s not racing.”

Cadillac’s long-run pace has been decent in free practice, generally on par with its main rivals’. But in Hyperpole 2, with little slipstream to skew data, the fastest V-Series.R reached just 331.8kph, while both Porsche and Ferrari were on top with 338.1kph.

Despite Ferrari having been the pre-qualifying favourite and Toyota the most obvious dark horse, the AF Corse-run cars are set to start from just seventh, 11th and 13th, while the Japanese manufacturer will have to make do with 10th and 17th on the grid.

Asked if he expected to see Ferrari and Toyota so far back, Bourdais retorted: “No, and I still don’t believe it. I think they’re making fun of us.

“Toyota has made mistakes. Anyone can make a mistake. But Ferrari is making fun of us, that’s for sure. When you see what Yifei [Ye] did on his first lap on a green track with 45kg or 50kg in the [#83] car – he set a very first time in 3m23.9s. At some point, come on! Okay, it makes for nice stories and all, but they’re taking the piss.”

Despite pole position for the sister #12 car and second place for his own #38 crew, Bourdais clearly has little hope for the race.

#12 Cadillac Hertz Team Jota Cadillac V-Series.R: Will Stevens, Norman Nato, Alex Lynn

Photo by: Nikolaz Godet

“It would be great if we got a podium finish, but there are three Ferraris already, so it’s tricky,” he pointed out.

“Toyota, we know their strengths in races: they make no mistakes, they’re reliable, they have no tyre degradation, they can run for 24 hours on a super strong pace. So if nothing happens to anyone, the top five is difficult to contend for.

“It’s easy to forget Porsche, with three cars that have been very, very fast on the straights since the start of the week. We can see that they’re not far off in terms of performance, so they’ll do really, really well in the race too. BMW hasn’t been on fire the way they were last year in quali, but they’ll be very fast in the race too.

“The level is very high. Honestly, I reckon a top five would be really nice. If we ended up on the podium, it would be a bit incredible. But winning would be really unexpected.”