On the face of it, Sebastien Bourdais didn’t have the kind of year to justify such a high ranking. There was only one win in the IMSA SportsCar Championship with the Ganassi Cadillac squad.
But what might be described as a season of misfortune — the car he shared with Renger van der Zande caught fire three times — included some stellar performances. He was always among the fastest, if not the fastest of the drivers aboard the Caddy V-Series.R.
Daytona and Petit were stand-out races for him Stateside, but he saved his best for an away day with Ganassi at Le Mans. Not only was he the quickest Cadillac driver, but best of the LMDh pack, too.
Bourdais keeping the Le Mans dream alive
A son of Le Mans born a stone’s throw from the Circuit de la Sarthe at the Clinique du Tertre Rouge might have won his home race with Peugeot twice over. The 2009 and 2011 editions were definitely ones that got away.
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If anyone thought that the dream of adding an overall victory to his 2016 GTE Pro class win with Ford was over, they had to think again after this year. Bourdais’s performance at the wheel of the #1 Ganassi Cadillac proved that the desire and the speed is still there.
“For a while, before I came into the Caddy programme, I was kind of accepting that I wouldn’t get that opportunity to go for the win in the top class,” says Bourdais, whose previous Le Mans start in the premier division came in 2012. “I’d kind of come to terms that it might not happen for me.”
But it did happen. He joined Cadillac and Ganassi in the Daytona Prototype international ranks in 2022 after the end of his IndyCar career. The start of the LMDh era then gave him the chance to chase the Le Mans dream.
It isn’t entirely fanciful on the basis of Bourdais’s pace to suggest that he and team-mates van der Zande and Scott Dixon could have been in the mix with Ferrari and Toyota but for a messy race that ultimately left them two laps in arrears in fourth.
“The pace of the car in the dry was enough that we could have been in the fight if we’d had a flawless race,” reckons Bourdais.
“I’m not sure we could have beaten Ferrari and Toyota on speed at the end, but we know that they both had their problems. If you are on the lead lap, you never know.
“Next year is going to be even tougher with even more cars. Someone will go through the 24 hours and have a perfect race. If you’re not in that car, it will be tough to win.
“I’ve got the class win at Le Mans and it was cool to be part of that because it meant so much to Ford. But for me, I’m not a Le Mans winner because I haven’t won it overall. I’m at peace with that.”
